President Joe Biden will direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to expand access to “gender-affirming” care at a Pride month event Wednesday, the White House said. Biden will issue an executive order telling HHS to strengthen efforts to ban conversion therapy and increase access to sex change treatment for transgender Americans, including for children. The order will also target legislation passed in some Republican-led states to limit the promotion of LGBT material to children, such as Florida’s parental rights law.
Breaking: President Biden has signed an executive order blocking federal funding for conversion therapy. https://t.co/iXbzR6vhO0
The executive order explicitly endorses “gender-affirming” care, a euphemism for treatments, oftentimes irreversible, that facilitate a sex change, such as hormone therapy or sex-change surgeries. The Biden administration has staunchly supported providing those treatments to children.
“The President’s Order charges HHS to work with states to promote expanded access to gender-affirming care,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “The Department of Justice has intervened and filed statements of interest in lawsuits across the country challenging state laws that seek to ban transgender children from accessing gender-affirming health care and participating in school activities as unconstitutional.”
Biden will sign the order surrounded by LGBT childrenfrom Texas and Florida, two states which
Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, the first openly-transgender American to serve in a Senate-confirmed position, reportedly endorsed the order in a statement: “Today’s executive order continues the Biden Administration’s work against prejudice and makes it easier for people living in this country to live their lives openly and freely without fear of harassment, scorn or attack.”
The same party that wants to raise the legal age for rifle purchases to 21 is also pushing to let minors kill preborn babies and mutilate their own genitals. American adults aged 18-20 already aren’t allowed to purchase handguns (and many states don’t allow them to obtain a concealed carry permit), more or less blocking them from practicing the basic self-defense precaution of stowing a defensive weapon to stop a bad guy with a gun. Now, Second Amendment deniers also want to bar these Americans from owning a rifle, a popular choice for home defense.
But while Democrats want to punish millions of law-abiding, prospective young gun owners for the evil, disturbed actions of a few of their peers, they’re also demanding that kids far younger be allowed to commit infanticide and mutilate their own bodies.
Letting Teens Commit Baby Murder
The radical abortion bill that Democrats renewed after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade sought to virtually eliminate any restrictions on abortion up to the point of birth. Minors are already allowed to obtain abortions, but the legislation would also nuke state laws mandating parental notification for such young girls. Lest you think this is an incidental inclusion, Democrats have specifically attacked state parental notification laws.
Planned Parenthood’s website doesn’t even try not to sound like a pervert offering kids candy: “If you’re under 18, you may or may not have to tell a parent in order to get an abortion,” it teases.
The ACLU estimates that 350,000 girls younger than 18 get pregnant in America every year, and that 31 percent (or roughly 108,500) of them choose to terminate their babies’ lives. There were 652,639 abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control in 2014; in the same year, the Guttmacher Institute found that 0.2 percent of abortions — or roughly 1,300 — were executed on girls 14 years old or younger.
Fighting for these young, impressionable girls to get abortions doesn’t just push them into the commission of murder, with the likely accompaniment of lifelong guilt, it also subjects them to trauma themselves. Sarah Eubanks, a former abortion facility employee, described one 12-year-old girl whose grandmother brought her in for an abortion:
I remember that look on her face that she just didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t want to be there. She started moving around and the doctor said, ‘You need to hold her down.’ I did put my hands on her and said ‘You have to settle down, you gotta be still, you’re gonna hurt yourself. You have to be still.’ And within an instant, she pushed her feet out of the stirrups and started running down the hall with the speculum in her vagina with blood running down her legs. The doctor said, ‘I’m not touching this.’ She was that upset. She just didn’t want to be there. She was screaming.
The hundreds of thousands of preborn babies’ lives lost to the abortionist’s scalpel every year haven’t dampened Democrats’ desires to let adolescent girls (or any women) make the decision to take a human life. But at the same time, the left will throw gun death numbers in your face to push their anti-gun agenda, even when firearm-related homicides are a fraction of abortion numbers, and are far outpaced by defensive gun use. Pew reported 19,384 murders involving a firearm in 2020, compared to up to 3 million “defensive gun uses by victims” per year, according to a CDC study.
Not only do Democrats want to let children kill their babies, they want to let children make damaging and irreversible changes to their own bodies.
Letting Children Sterilize Themselves
A report from Florida Medicaid found that “Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical intervention is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” and “the available evidence demonstrates that these treatments cause irreversible physical changes and side effects that can affect long-term health.” As a result, Florida Medicaid found that experimental procedures like cross-sex hormones or surgeries were insufficiently safe for coverage.
The report also listed the irreversible or potentially irreversible effects of cross-sex hormones, including facial and body hair growth, male pattern baldness, a deepening voice, and an enlarged clitoris for females taking male hormones, and breast growth, infertility, and sexual dysfunction for males taking female hormones. The irreversible effects of surgical interventions, such as elective mastectomies or genital amputations, are obviously far higher.
But those concerning effects didn’t stop the Biden administration’s Justice Department from sending an ominous memo to state attorneys general, threatening legal violations for states that don’t offer various damaging interventions to children.
“A ban on gender-affirming procedures, therapy, or medication may be a form of discrimination against transgender persons,” the memo stated. It also had the arrogance to claim that “it is well established within the medical community that gender-affirming care for transgender youth is not only appropriate but often necessary for their physical and mental health.”
The Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs further spelled out just what is meant by “gender-affirming care,”including social treatment of a child as the opposite sex, puberty blockers, artificial pumps of hormones like testosterone or estrogen, or surgeries like elective mastectomies and amputation of reproductive body parts. OPA recommends“social affirmation” for“any age,” puberty blockers at any time during puberty, hormones beginning in early adolescence, and surgeries for adults or “case-by-case in adolescence.” Some parents try to claim their children “came out as trans” as toddlers.
But No Guns for Law-Abiding Young Adults!
These procedures threaten lifelong damage to children who undergo them, yet the Biden administration and other Democrats want unfettered access to them and punishments for health professionals and parents who question them. They also celebrate the idea of teenage girls taking the lives of their preborn babies, with no parental consent and with no consideration of whether a child has the mental maturity to make such a decision — never mind the fact that it’s an act of murder.
But Democrats are all too happy to further erode Americans’ Second Amendment rights by arbitrarily raising the minimum purchase age for a rifle from one adult age to another. Unlike committing an abortion or pumping your child full of hormones, the legal purchase or ownership of a gun does not cause anyone harm. On the contrary, it often protects against it.
Yet Democrats support letting pubescent children abuse themselves and adolescents kill their children, while insisting that an 18-year-old who passes a federal background check can be denied the constitutional right to self-defense. Are 18-year-olds too immature for constitutional rights? Are children and teenagers old enough for a concocted right to harm themselves and others? I would argue it’s neither — but it can’t be both.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
Lia Thomas and gender-bending allies say their delusional and norm-shattering behavior is fine because they’re happy, but that’s textbook narcissism, and we’ve enabled it far too long.
Transgender-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas — a man who claims to be a woman and recently dominated his NCAA female competitors — finally broke his silence with an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and here’s what he wants you to know: “I’m happy.”
Thomas was thrust into the limelight after the lackluster male swimmer took wrong-sex hormones for a year and subsequently the women’s Division I swimming title, causing quite a stir. When ABC interviewer Juju Chang asked about his competitive advantage — the question Thomas’s teammates, opponents, and critics can’t get past — Thomas shrugged it off.
“There’s a lot of factors that go into a race and how well you do, and the biggest change for me is that I’m happy,” Thomas said in an undeniably male pitch. This “happy” theme permeated the whole interview, interspersed with an air of entitlement from the swimmer.
“I also don’t need anybody’s permission to be myself and to do the sport that I love,” Thomas declared, adding later, “Trans people don’t transition for athletics. We transition to be happy and authentic and our true selves.”
The kicker for Thomas, which is obvious to the watching world, is that actually, yes, you do need permission to be yourself and play the sport you love when that self defies the laws of biology and that sport is a collegiate program designed for the very real, immutable category of “women.” Any other student-athlete knows that if her “authentic self” is obese or jacked up on steroids, for instance, she will not get permission to play a collegiate sport, her sincere love for it notwithstanding. Where does the gender-bending left get the idea that they’re entitled to inclusion without permission?
The sorry state of the NCAA and the country’s cultural mores at large are actually in many ways a result of the “Lia Thomas mindset,” more commonly known as narcissism. When science and empirical data have said, like Chang, that males have a competitive advantage over females, the transgender-allied left, like Thomas, have dismissed it with a “They’re happy!” and a “Let them be their authentic selves!”
The rejoinder is obvious and unavoidable: What about the very real women whom Thomas dominated by virtue of him being a man? What about their happiness and their “authentic selves” as the best female swimmers? What about his troubled peers who have been flashed by Thomas’s penis in the women’s locker room and been forced to expose themselves in front of him? Although a happy Thomas insists, “Trans women are not a threat to women’s sports,” what are the runners-up supposed to do with the mountain of evidence to the contrary?
The rules of the game have been set not by logic nor reason nor basic and once-widely accepted facts, but by the narcissism of the minority. Perhaps — if their entitlement and lack of empathy rise to the level of diagnosable narcissism — the correlation of that narcissism with the trans-allied left should be no surprise. After all, research shows a leftist ideology, mental health issues, and LGBT identity go hand in hand in what’s known as the mental health-sexuality-liberalism nexus. If Thomas actually has gender dysphoria, perhaps that mental health issue corresponds with other mental health problems, narcissistic personality disorder being no exception.
The predictability of the narcissism, however, is no excuse for it. Nor is empathy for those with mental health problems a license to indulge them, especially when it comes at the expense of others. Thomas and the swimmer’s gender-bending allies have declared that their delusional and norm-shattering behavior is fine because they’re happy, but that’s textbook narcissism, and we’ve enabled it far too long.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
An individual walks through the aisles of a library. | Unsplash/Banter Snaps
State Farm has withdrawn its support for a program that distributes LGBT-themed books to schools and libraries after a whistleblower leaked an email showing the company encouraged staff to donate books about gender identity to children as young as 5. The insurance company’s Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Public Affairs, Victor Terry, announced the end of the collaboration with the organization behind the program, GenderCool Project, in a Monday email to staff obtained by the Twitter account Libs of TikTok. The GenderCool Project describes itself as a “youth-led movement” designed to highlight “transgender and non-binary youth who are thriving.”
BREAKING: @StateFarm sent out a mass email to their staff today stating “we will no longer support that program” after they were exposed for supporting a project to push LGBTQ books into schools. A source tells me “the agents were really upset when we found out.” W pic.twitter.com/55P1QJ0oLa
“State Farm’s support of a philanthropic program, GenderCool Project, has been the subject of news and customer inquiries. This program that included books about gender identity was intended to promote inclusivity,” the email reads. “We will no longer support that program.”
Terry also wrote that State Farm does not support mandating school curriculum on gender identity, stating that “[c]onversations about gender and identity should happen at home with parents.” The chief diversity officer said that the company supports organizations that provide “resources for parents to have these conversations.”
State Farm confirmed in a Wednesday statement to The Christian Post that it’s no longer affiliated with the organization, insisting again that the program was created to promote “inclusivity.”
“We will continue to explore how we can support our associates, as well as organizations that align with our commitment to diversity and inclusion, including the LGBTQ+ community,” the company told CP. “We recognize and value the diversity of all people and support a culture of respect and inclusion in the communities in which we live and work, as well as our workplace.”
State Farm’s announcement about the discontinuation of its partnership with The GenderCool Project followed the release of a Jan. 18 email leaked to the nonprofit organization Consumers’ Research by concerned employees at the insurance company. Consumers’ Research, an organization that educates people about policy issues and corporate activities, has launched the “Like a Creepy Neighbor” public awareness campaign in response to State Farm’s partnership with the GenderCool Project.
The title of the campaign is a play on the company’s catchphrase, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” The leaked email was sent by Jose Soto, a corporate responsibility analyst for State Farm in Florida. It reveals that State Farm was “partnering with The GenderCool Project to help diversify classroom, community center and library bookshelves with a collection of books to help bring clarity and understanding to the national conversation about being transgender, inclusive and non-binary.”
🚨 Emails leaked to @ConsumersFirst from concerned @StateFarm employees show the company engaged in the woke indoctrination of kids age 5+.
State Farm partnered with The GenderCool Project — which aims to have conversations with children about being Transgender and Non-Binary. pic.twitter.com/MYcZSW8Yp1
The collection of books created by The GenderCool Project that State Farm sought to distribute includes works titled, A Kids Book About Being Transgender, A Kids Book About Being Inclusive and A Kids Book About Being Non-Binary.The books are designed to help children 5 years old and older have “challenging, important, and empowering conversations about the toughest and most pressing topics we face today.”
“The project’s goal is to increase representation of LGBTQ+ books and support our communities in having challenging, important and empowering conversations with children age 5+,” Soto’s email reads. “This is a fantastic way to give back and an easy project that will help support the LGBTQ+ community and to make the world around us better.”
The company reportedly intended to recruit six insurance agents to “[receive] these books in March, then [donate] them to their community by the end of April.” While the email only referenced recruiting agents in Florida, it indicated that the program is not just a regional initiative.
“Nationwide, approximately 550 State Farm agents and employees will have the opportunity to donate this three book bundle to their local teacher, community center, or library of their choice,” Soto wrote.
Hild told The Washington Examiner and other news organizations in a Zoom call that the program likely would not be allowed in Florida schools come July 1, when the Parental Rights in Education Bill takes effect.
Critics of the bill, signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, have derided it as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that could stigmatize LGBT students. The legislation prohibits public schools and third parties from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with students in kindergarten through third grade.
“We would hope State Farm would … cooperate with the governor’s office or law enforcement in [Florida] and retrieve any of these books that may have been donated to public schools that by law now do not belong there,” Hild said, adding that such discussions with children are inappropriate according to “any reasonable understanding.”
The issue of gender identity in schools has appeared in several learning institutions throughout the country in recent months. Earlier this month, Fairfax County Public School Board, which oversees the largest school district in Virginia, reviewed a student handbook that includes suspension as a potential punishment for students who “maliciously” misgender their trans-identifying peers.
The proposed revisions to the district’s Students’ Rights and Responsibilities (SR&R) handbook indicates that students can face a five-day suspension for “malicious deadnaming,” which is defined as “[w]hen someone, intentionally or not, refers to a person who is transgender or gender-expansive by a name other than their own chosen name.”
In April, two sets of parents of the Ludlow Public School District in Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against school officials at Baird Middle School in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts Springfield Division. The complaint maintains that the school officials reportedly encouraged their children to secretly adopt new gender identities without informing their parents. The lawsuit accused the school of having a “protocol and practice of concealing from parents information related to their children’s gender identity.”
Leftists push their gender ideology on children, yet conservative parents complaining about Drag Queen Story Hour are blamed for starting a culture war.
Can the gaslighting on gender and sexual identitarianism from the left get any more absurd? The Washington Post last month ran a story about how a decision by the community center in McLean, Virginia to co-sponsor a “Drag Story Book Hour” for children during Pride Month has, in their awkward wording, “set off culture wars.”
The May election for three open seats at the community center has attracted nine candidates, including Katharine Gorka, a former Trump administration official who has criticized the diversity, inclusion, and equity policies that resulted in the drag event. WaPo reporter Antonio Olivo observed, with editorial flourish, that this is “an example of how nothing is safe from the nation’s raging culture wars.”
A suburban community center hosts a drag queen story hour (DQSH) for elementary school students, yet it’s conservatives who are the ones stoking the culture war by complaining about it? A Florida school board member last year chaperoned a group of elementary school children on a field trip to a gay bar and the state’s community centers promote DQSH, but it’s conservatives who are the dangerous extremists for supporting a Florida parental rights in education bill?
Drag queens do bizarre, borderline pornographic acts in front of children, but it’s conservatives who are responsible for miseducating and damaging American youth? Come on.
Anything but Innocent
DQSH, as Gorka recently told me, “is not, as the American Library Association dishonestly describes it, an effort to combat ‘marginalization and underrepresentation.’” Rather, as the DQSH website itself declares, it is “drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores” in order to “capture the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.”
That word “play” is a bit concerning, especially given the sexually explicit nature of DQSH, and the many allegations that this pedagogy equates to grooming. A drag performer at one DQSH event in D.C. last year sang shirtless with duct tape on her breasts, sported a thong, and pretended to have fake sperm over her mouth.
Another DQSH event in Portland, Oregon in 2019 showed photos of children “lounging atop of the costumed queens on the floor, grabbing at false breasts, and burying their faces in their bodies.” This is not exactly light-hearted, appropriate public entertainment, notes Gorka.
A Concerning National Phenomenon
It would be more accurate to say that DQSH events bring the culture war directly to America’s children, with an ideological gameplan expressly dedicated to sexualizing our nation’s youth and urging children to consider themselves gender dysphoric. The first DQSH event in the United States was held in San Francisco in 2015. Since then, the events have spread across the country.
As of 2020, the official DQSH website boasted almost 50 independently operated chapters across the United States, including in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. It is also supported by the American Library Association, whose extensive resource page includes information on how libraries can resist and censure people in local communities who object to these events.
Terrifyingly, the grooming charge is reality. In 2021, the former president of an organization that served as a sponsor for the Milwaukee Drag Queen Story Hour was charged with possessing child pornography depicting the sexual abuse of underage boys, including toddlers. In 2019, the Houston Public Library admitted a registered child sex offender to read to kids in a DQSH event. Allyn Walker, a transgender former assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, sought to defend people who are attracted to minors.
As I noted in a recent Federalist article, the media and schools aggressively promoting transgenderism have created a national crisis. There has been a dramatic, unprecedented surge in people identifying with sexual identities other than heterosexual.
As Abigail Shrier documents at length in her alarming book “Irreversible Damage,” the consequences for those who seek hormone treatment and/or sexual reassignment surgery are lifelong. DQSH marks an attempt to push the boundaries even further, not only for children entering puberty but to early elementary school and pre-K.
This truly is a national challenge. DQSH now reportedly has chapters in 29 different states, which means there is plenty of local political work to be done. As Gorka notes, “pornographic books such as ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’ can be found in hundreds of school libraries across the country, thanks in part to the fact that The Young Adult Library Services Association (a division of the American Library Association) put the book at the top of its Teens’ Top 10 book list in 2021.”
Malevolent Gaslighting
This makes the left’s abusive and hyperbolic rhetoric on conservative resistance to DQSH and other grooming activities all the more insulting and infuriating. The Washington Post provocatively featured a political cartoon in April portraying Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as responsible for the deaths of trans children. Liberal media outlets are claiming that conservatives should be held responsible for the suicides of children struggling with dysphoria.
Yet who encouraged prepubescent children to think about myopic topics like gender dysphoria in the first place? I certainly never heard of such things when I was in grade school in the 1990s. Who told children that their gender and sexual identity were the most important thing about them, and that misidentifying or misgendering amounted to the worst possible offense? Who is making millions of dollars off lying to and emotionally damaging impressionable, easily-manipulated children?
The answer is those advocating DQSH and the many other ubiquitous forms of sexual and gender propaganda influencing millions of American youth. It is they who are deceiving — and often permanently damaging — an entire generation of Americans for the sake of their own ideological agenda, the normalizing of bizarre, pornographic behavior.
No, conservatives did not inflame the culture war over trans ideology and drag queens. But we sure would like to stop it.
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.
Long the nation’s chief abortion provider, Planned Parenthood has branched out. Its latest endeavor? Sterilizing America’s youth. Planned Parenthood has quietly been in the gender transition business since at least 2017. Today, more than a third of its offices — 239 clinics in more than 40 states — provide transgender services. And it’s not stopping there.
While those seeking puberty blockers or surgical procedures are referred elsewhere, Planned Parenthood is offering access to cross-sex hormones, promoting gender ideology in sex ed programs, and establishing “well-being centers” in local high schools. The organization is looking to cash in on gender transition for years to come.
Easy Access
Just how readily does Planned Parenthood provide the gender-confused with cross-sex hormones? Consider the case of detransitioner Helena Kirschner. She received testosterone during her first visit — without blood work or a mental health referral.
Sadly, Kirschner is not the exception. Offices guarantee that patients can receive hormones without an evaluation of their mental health. They also promise that, in most cases, patients can expect same-day prescriptions.
Already thousands of kids are getting hormones like candy. Three California regional offices of Planned Parenthood recorded almost 4,000 gender-related visits from July 2019 to June 2021. In one California region, more than 750 cycles of hormones were prescribed in a year. These numbers are not representative for California; other Planned Parenthood offices in the state don’t even bother reporting these services.
Planned Parenthood offices state they only offer hormones to minors aged 16 or older with parental consent, but that is not the whole truth. In California, minors may receive “sensitive care,” like transition services, without parental permission. Given Planned Parenthood’s past deception, there’s no reason to think the organization won’t bend its own rules for profit.
And that’s just California. Thirty-three states plus D.C. have laws that, to some degree, allow minors to obtain routine health care without parental consent. In states where “gender affirming care” is deemed “medically necessary,” minors may be able to transition without parents knowing. And hormones may just be one Planned Parenthood appointment away.
All of this is deeply troubling. Despite Planned Parenthood’s deceptive marketing, transition is not proven to be the best medical practice. We know that 88 to 98 percent of gender dysphoric kids will reconcile with their biological sex if allowed to go through puberty “untreated.” Moreover, those who do transition are estimated to be 19 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers.
Comprehensive Sex-Ed
Even before Planned Parenthood helps minors transition, it teaches them to desire it. Across the country, schools hire Planned Parenthood or its affiliates to lead sex ed. And its reach is not insignificant. Nationally, 1.2 million students receive Planned Parenthood’s affiliate sex ed programming each year, according to the organization’s last annual report.
While curriculum requirements vary by state, these programs promote everything from abortion and the morning-after pill to gender fluidity and transition. By indoctrinating youth, the abortion giant creates the demand it needs to profit from gender services.
Well-Being Centers
But creating demand does not stop with sex ed. Planned Parenthood wants to cement a permanent school-to-clinic pipeline. In 2019, the abortion giant announced it would open 50 “wellbeing centers” in Los Angeles high schools. These centers will offer “health and wellness education services, sexual health services,” and more. Innocuous as these services appear, they exist to market Planned Parenthood’s services. Handpicked staff will provide transition support and chemical abortion.
Ultimately, Planned Parenthood’s rapid expansion of services should raise alarm. Planned Parenthood is no longer a danger just to the pregnant and the unborn, but to every teen as well.
Legislation Needed
Thankfully, state and federal policymakers can help protect minors from falling prey to these “services.” By enacting bills like Arkansas’ SAFE Act, states could stop Planned Parenthood and others’ efforts to mislead minors. Instead of passing bills that undermine parental rights (as California has done), states should work to ensure parental rights are upheld and respected.
In Congress, members must remain vigilant against the Equality Act, which would make the school-to-surgery pipeline a permanent fixture of American society. Lawmakers should also consider Hyde-like riders to ensure the Biden administration can’t redirect federal dollars to help Planned Parenthood sterilize our kids.
Elected officials who haven’t been bought out by woke corporations can learn from the far-left’s tone deafness. Policies that protect kids and empower parents are popular with voters, especially parents. By championing parents and children, legislators can stop bad actors like Planned Parenthood from preying on the vulnerable.
Jared Eckert is a research assistant in The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family. Emma Sofia Mull is a graduate of the think tank’s Young Leaders Program.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The Walt Disney Company will soon be airing an ad on all of its channels featuring the mother of a trans-identified child lambasting supporters of bills banning genital mutilation surgeries for children and the teaching of LGBT ideology in schools. The mother accuses these Americans of trying to “tear our families apart.”
The LGBT advocacy organization GLAAD released the public service announcement called “Protect Our Families” last week. The 60-second ad profiles the Briggle family, which includes Amber Briggle along with her husband and her two children. The ad focuses on her trans-identified daughter, who now identifies as a boy and goes by the name Max.
The LGBT advocacy group says the video shows that “families with transgender kids are just like any other family: they love their kids unconditionally and simply want the best for them.”
In the video, Briggle discusses Max’s interests as she narrates a background video of her daughter in an effort to persuade those watching the ad that society should support parents who want their children to be given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, saying a transgender child “is no different than yours.”
“There are some politicians who are trying to tear my family apart, simply because my [daughter] is transgender,” she asserts. “Trans kids don’t have a political agenda. They are just kids. They just want to be left alone.”
CNBC reports that the ad, which does not explicitly mention any legislation, in particular, will air on channels owned by The Walt Disney Company as well as channels owned by Comcast, WarnerMedia and Paramount. The Walt Disney Company has received intense criticism over its outspoken opposition to a Florida parental rights bill recently signed into law by the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The legislation states that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation and gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” While states including Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas have passed laws banning the prescription of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to minors, the Florida law does not include such a provision.
After initially declining to take a position on the Florida bill, Disney, which operates the popular theme park Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, came out hard against the bill after critics derided it as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney’s opposition to the law that prevents teachers from exposing young children to LGBT ideology, motivated worship artist Sean Feucht to hold a protest in front of Disney’s headquarters in Burbank, California.
Last month, Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute and City Journal released video footage of Disney officials discussing their efforts to incorporate “queerness” and other LGBT ideology into programming directed at children as part of what he described as “Disney’s all-hands meeting about the Florida parental rights bill.”
Briggle, a progressive activist who is running for city council in Denton, Texas, operates a blog titled “Love to the Max.” In an August 2019 blog post, Briggle listed “3 things your child can do to help make middle school better for my trans son.” Accompanying the blog post is a photograph of Max, which identifies the child as a member of the fifth grade graduating class of 2019. This seems to indicate that Briggle’s child is now in eighth grade and is either 13 or 14 years old.
In the blog, she noted that “my sweet [daughter], Max, socially transitioned in 1st grade — changing [her] name and pronouns, but otherwise living life exactly the same (only much, much happier).” In a speech at this year’s GLAAD Media Awards, Briggle said, “We live in Texas, where Gov. [Greg] Abbott issued a directive to investigate parents like my husband, Adam and I for child abuse because we provide Max with the gender-affirming care he needs.”
'I am angry every single day because of the way the world treats my son' — Mom Amber Briggle delivered a tearful speech at the GLAAD Media Awards after being investigated for providing gender-affirming care for her trans son in Texas pic.twitter.com/q4nc6kiP68
Briggle added that Child Protective Services recently visited their home and questioned them. She expressed relief that “a court has barred Texas from investigating parents of trans kids.”
Supporters of legislation banning what LGBT advocates refer to as “gender-affirming care,” including the American College of Pediatricians, warn that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can have negative side effects. Side effects of puberty blockers identified by the American College of Pediatricians include “emotional instability” as well as “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility.”
The medical organization lists “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan” as possible complications of cross-sex hormones.
While supporters of providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to youth with gender dysphoria maintain that such procedures help improve the children’s mental health, children who underwent some form of gender transition only to regret doing so later insisted that such procedures worsened their mental health.
The newsmagazine program “60 Minutes” profiled a group of “detransitioners” last year, including a male who once identified as female explaining to CBS’ Lesley Stahl that he “had never really been suicidal before until I had my breast augmentation.” He told Stahl that “about a week afterward, I wanted to actually kill myself,” adding: “I had a plan, and I was going to do it but I just kept thinking about my family to stop myself.”
Another detransitioner, who once sought to transition from female to male, developed a “really disturbing sense that, like, a part of my body was missing, almost a ghost limb feeling about being like, there’s something that should be there.”
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox became the latest GOP governor to veto legislation Tuesday aimed at protecting women’s sports with a prohibition on male participation.
“I am not an expert in transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting,” Cox wrote to explain the veto. “When in doubt, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.”
The female swimmers who lost in a competition dominated by Lia Thomas last weekend, a transgender athlete who competed in the men’s league for years under the University of Pennsylvania, may take a different view of what constitutes “kindness, mercy and compassion.” The 22-year-old fifth-year senior took home the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship in the 500-yard freestyle Thursday over a slate of female competitors.
Reka Gyorgy, a swimmer at Virginia Tech who came up short in the qualifier for the event, criticized the NCAA’s policy allowing biological males with years of testosterone-enhanced capability to compete in women’s leagues if they merely identify as women.
“It doesn’t promote our sport in a good way, and I think it is disrespectful against the biologically female swimmers who are competing in the NCAA,” Gyorgy wrote in an open letter to the collegiate athletic association post on Instagram. “It feels like the final spot was taken from me.”
Cox’s decision to allow men to compete in women’s sports came a day after Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb vetoed similar legislation. In his veto letter to lawmakers, Holcomb explained the bill left “too many unanswered questions,” a justification similar to one South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gave last year when she refused to sign a bill protecting women’s sports.
Noem eventually capitulated on the issue nearly a year later, signing a bill to bar male athletes in women’s competition without a mea culpa for her intervening crusade against right-leaning outlets that exposed her dubious reasons for the initial veto. Holcomb is known for favoring big business interests over the interests of Indiana’s majority-Republican voters.
Hours before Cox vetoed the proposal to bar male competition in female leagues, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis officially recognized Thomas’ runner-up in the 500-yard freestyle race, Emma Weyant, as the true champion.
By allowing men to compete in women's sports, the NCAA is destroying opportunities for women, making a mockery of its championships, and perpetuating a fraud.
In Florida, we reject these lies and recognize Sarasota's Emma Weyant as the best women's swimmer in the 500y freestyle. pic.twitter.com/tBmFxFE3q6
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The transgender misinformation machine is at it again. The New York Times recently published an extensive essay arguing against screening before medical transition — if someone says she wants hormones or surgery, doctors should immediately break out the syringes and prep the operating room.
The article, by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich of Bowdoin College, exemplifies how the transgender movement uses misinformation to advance its agenda. Marzano-Lesnevich asserts, “That gender-affirming health care saves lives is clear: A 2018 literature review by Cornell University concluded that 93 percent of studies found that transition improved transgender people’s heath [sic] outcomes, while the remaining 7 percent found mixed or null results. Not a single study in the review concluded negative impact.”
That seems dispositive — unless you look at the studies. The cited literature review was titled the “What We Know Project” and was directed by the LGBT scholar and activist Nathaniel Frank, who cited it in his own New York Times piece on transgenderism a few years ago, writing that “Our findings make it indisputable that gender transition has a positive effect on transgender well-being.”
Poorly Conducted Studies
These proclamations that the science is settled are a bold facade on rickety scaffolding. When this New York Times article invokes the authority of science, it seeks to evoke the image of careful statisticians sifting through data collected by diligent doctors.
But it is actually appealing to self-selected online surveys with cash prizes, studies with tiny samples, and studies that are missing more than half of their subjects. Stacking a bunch of weak studies on top of each other doesn’t provide a strong result, but The New York Times presumes readers won’t bother to check the details — the editors certainly didn’t.
Back in 2019, I took a closer look at the studies the What We Know Project cites, and found a methodological mess. Many of the studies had serious flaws, beginning with small sample sizes. As I noted, “Of the fifty relevant papers identified by the project, only five studies (10 percent) had more than 300 subjects, while twenty-six studies (52 percent) had fewer than 100. Seventeen studies (34 percent) had fifty or fewer subjects, and five of those had a sample size of twenty-five or less.”
The flaws extended far beyond small sample size, and the largest studies tended to be the weakest, often consisting of little more than online surveys with a self-selecting sample. Nor should we put much faith in a study that recruited subjects for an online survey by advertising “on online groups and discussion forums that were dedicated to FTM [female-to-male] members. . . . Upon survey completion, participants were entered into a lottery drawing for cash prizes.”
Even the better-designed long-term studies were often plagued by poor response rates. A European study had 201 out of 546 respond — just 37 percent. And though missing data is, by definition, missing, it is reasonable to suspect that those with poor outcomes are overrepresented among those who could not or would not respond.
Regret Rates
Nor did The New York Times check Marzano-Lesnevich’s claim that “gender-affirming health care has some of the lowest rates of regret in medicine. A 2021 systemic review of the medical literature, covering 27 studies and 7,928 transgender patients, found a regret rate of 1 percent or less.” But read the paper and it is quickly apparent both that the review has significant weaknesses and that The New York Times allowed its conclusions to be misrepresented.
Of the 27 studies used in their analysis, the review authors ranked only five as “good” and only four as having a low risk of bias. Many of the studies had the same flaws as those examined in the What We Know Project (indeed, some studies were used in both).
Another problem is that the majority of the data in the 2021 review came from a single study conducted by a Dutch group retrospectively examining the records of their own gender clinic. But a retrospective review of medical files will only identify regrets from patients who shared them with the gender clinic that performed their surgeries. Furthermore, the study only identified regrets following gonadectomy, and not those who regretted other surgeries, or who never had surgery but did regret taking cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers.
In addition to the problem of allowing a flawed data set to dominate the 2021 review, this illustrates another persistent difficulty with studies of transgender regret, which is that they are often conducted by those who provide medical transition, rather than independent researchers. People whose livelihoods and reputations depend on facilitating medical transition might be less than diligent and rigorous in looking for regret.
To their credit, the authors of the 2021 review do discuss some of the limits and difficulties of their work, writing that various problems:
represent a big barrier for generalization of the results of this study. The lack of validated questionnaires to evaluate regret in this population is a significant limiting factor. In addition, bias can occur because patients might restrain from expressing regrets due to fear of being judged by the interviewer. Moreover, the temporarity of the feeling of regret in some patients and the variable definition of regret may underestimate the real prevalence of ‘true’ regret.
None of these qualifications regarding regret were even hinted at in the published column. Despite The New York Times’ citing it, the 2021 review does not prove that “gender-affirming health care has some of the lowest rates of regret in medicine.”
As the authors note, regret is not only an imperfect measure, but it is often difficult to measure, with no set criteria defining it. In one Swedish review cited by the What We Know Project, it was defined “as application for reversal of the legal gender status among those who were sex reassigned,” which excludes those who succumbed to depression or addiction, or who lived unhappily after transition without seeking to legally detransition.
Gatekeeping before Transition
Furthermore, even if we uncritically accept the results of the 2021 review, it does not support the argument that gatekeeping before medical transition is unnecessary and harmful. Rather, the authors claim that the low regret rate they found “reflects and corroborates the increased [sic] in accuracy of patient selection criteria for GAS [gender affirmation surgery].”
In short, the review argues that medical gatekeeping keeps regret rates low. That The New York Times allowed this review to be used as evidence against medical screening, and in favor of self-ID for medical transition, exemplifies the persistent practice of American transgender activists using studies of (mostly) carefully screened European adults to argue against screening before medical transition, even for children.
Unfortunately, the aggregation of (often questionable) studies, and the exaggeration of their conclusions by activists, is only part of the problem. These efforts to spread misinformation are augmented by the intimidation of dissenting scientists and the suppression of results that trans activists dislike.
Suppressing Dissent
Researchers have learned to fear the wrath of LGBT activists, and take pains to avoid it. Results that undermine the narrative have to be carefully presented lest the public draw the wrong conclusions. Thus, when scientists concluded that there is no “gay gene” they “worked with LGBTQ advocacy groups and science-communication specialists on the best way to convey their findings in the research paper and to the public.”
With regard to transgender ideology, the intimidation is even more overt. For example, Lisa Littman’s qualitative study describing the phenomenon of rapid-onset gender dysphoria met a ferocious response from transgender activists. Similarly, activists smeared Canadian psychologist Kenneth Zucker and forced him out of his position as the leader of a gender identity clinic, even though he sometimes supported transitioning children. He was just more cautious about it than activists wanted. He was eventually vindicated, but targeting him still sent a warning to any researchers who are seen as insufficiently pro-trans.
As these cases demonstrate, the science is being manipulated to fit transgender ideology. Shoddy studies — often conducted by activists and doctors with a stake in medical transition — are boosted if they support the trans narrative, while results and researchers who challenge it are suppressed. This skewed data is then used by trans activists and their allies to shape the discourse.
Uncomfortable facts and stories are kept out of the official narrative. Insightful and moving first-person accounts of transition and detransition are confined to non-traditional outlets such as Substack, as are the warnings of leading trans doctors about the reckless rushing of children into transition. The information bubble is the point.
Going forward, disagreement will be labeled “misinformation” and banned from social media, and dissidents will be labeled as bigots who should be fired from their jobs. Doctors will be required to practice only according to the approved narrative, and educators will encourage children to transition without parental knowledge and consent. Worse still, the government will take children from parents who do not support transition.
The purpose of the transgender misinformation machine is not so much to persuade, but to provide justification for coercion. The point of the lies and distortions is to impose transgender ideology on all of us, especially children.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Madison, Wis. — Parents are “not entitled” to know their kids’ gender identity, according to a recent training session in Wisconsin’s Eau Claire Area School District.
Empower Wisconsin obtained a copy of a training slide from a late February staff development session. The 2021-22 Equity session on Safe Spaces reminds teachers that “parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.”
“Teachers are often straddling this complex situation. In ECASD, our priority is supporting the student,” the professional development facilitator guide states. Teachers were encouraged to “Talk amongst yourselves!”
The lesson — that teachers know better than parents about what is best for their kids — is not sitting well with some community members.
“We are appalled that ECASD would display such blatant disregard for the parents and guardians of our community’s children. We are equally dismayed that current school district leadership would pressure teachers into breaking a social contract that we all know and understand—that parents and guardians hold primary responsibility and decision making for the welfare and care of their children,” said parents and school board candidates Nicole Everson, Corey Cronrath, and Melissa Winter in a joint statement.
The district’s training session is also legally suspect. A district court in 2020 issued a partial injunction against Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy allowing children of any age to transition to a different gender identity at school — without parental consent. The full case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of parents challenging the gender identity policy “that violates the rights of parents to make important healthcare decisions on their children’s behalf.” The policy includes the following provisions:
Children of any age can transition to a different gender identity at school, by changing their name and pronouns, without parental notice or consent.
District employees are prohibited from notifying parents, without the child’s consent, that their child has or wants to change gender identity at school, or that their child may be dealing with gender dysphoria.
District employees are even instructed to deceive parents by using the child’s legal name and pronouns with family, while using the different name and pronouns adopted by the child in the school setting.
It’s not clear whether the Eau Claire Area School District has a similar policy.
The school board candidates are demanding district administrators issue an apology to teachers for “placing them at odds with families and also to parents and guardians for breaking the trust and partnership that is critical for thriving students and a stellar school district.”
An apology doesn’t appear to be forthcoming. ECASD Superintendent Michael Johnson issued a statement to Empower Wisconsin asserting the district is upholding its responsibility to maintain an educational environment that is “equitable, safe and inclusive for all students.”
“Our staff often find themselves in positions of trust with our students. The staff development presentation shared extensive data and information to assist our staff members in our ongoing efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students,” Johnson said in the statement. “The ECASD prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.”
The superintendent said the staff training focused on data showing students who identify as non-heterosexual have a higher incidence rate of mental health issues than heterosexual students. But critics say a school’s commitment to “equity and inclusiveness” does not give license to educators to hide important information from parents and guardians.
Cronrath, Everson, and Winter are among seven candidates, including two incumbents, running for three open seats on the school board next month. The three jumped into the race because they were concerned about the eroding of parental rights in the district. They say Eau Claire schools’ “blatant disregard for parental rights and responsibilities” has been creeping into the district’s classrooms. The latest training session sends three very dangerous messages to parents and the wider community, the candidates assert.
1. Schools are in control of children, not parents and families—When you entrust your child into the walls of ECASD, you no longer have the right as a parent to be informed of major developments in your child’s school life. In fact, you must ‘earn it.’
2. Current Leadership is willing to pit teachers against parents—Open communication between the classroom and home has always been critical to healthy school communities and student development. ECASD is putting teachers in a difficult and dishonest position by instructing them to actively withhold information from parents.
3. What goes on in the walls of ECASD is privileged information—By indicating that information about your child is ‘knowledge that must be earned,’ ECASD is setting a dangerous precedent. If identity questions for your child can be hidden from you, is diet, curriculum, healthcare, inappropriate relationships, mental health concerns, etc. also no longer the business of parents? Just what are parents and guardians allowed to know and when?
The Republican-led state legislature passed a Parental Bill of Rights that would prohibit school policies that infringe on a parent’s or guardian’s role as the primary caregiver of their child. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat and the former state superintendent, is likely to veto the bill.
Eau Claire Area School District has a history of overreach. Last fall, school officials worked with the local health czar in removing a 14-year-old girl from school after someone in her class tested positive for Covid-19. The girl and her mom resisted, accusing authorities of abusing their powers. The county health director then sought a court order to have the girl forcibly removed from school.
The Biden administration has threatened to take “immediate action” against Texas after the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton designated puberty blockers and the castration of children child abuse under state law and Gov. Greg Abbott decided to investigate parents who allow their gender-confused children to undergo such procedures.
“This is government overreach at its worst,” President Biden said in a statement last week. “Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the Governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points. These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”
Biden said the Department of Health and Human Services has put the state of Texas “on notice that their discriminatory actions put children’s lives at risk.”
The same day, the HHS issued new guidance saying such restrictions likely violate federal civil rights laws. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra released a statement, announcing he has directed his team “to evaluate the tools at our disposal to protect trans and gender diverse youth in Texas, and today I am announcing several steps we can take to protect them.”
“HHS will take immediate action if needed,” Becerra continued. “Any individual or family in Texas who is being targeted by a child welfare investigation because of this discriminatory gubernatorial order is encouraged to contact our Office for Civil Rights to report their experience.”
In a formal opinion last month, Paxton said that certain sex-change procedures and treatments “can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions of chapter 261 of the Texas Family Code.” Such procedures include castration, the removal of healthy body parts, as well as the prescription of experimental puberty-blocking drugs, among others.
“Beyond the obvious harm of permanently sterilizing a child, these procedures and treatments can cause side effects and harms beyond permanent infertility,” he stated.
“The medical evidence does not demonstrate that children and adolescents benefit from engaging in these irreversible sterilization procedures.”
Paxton added that allowing such invasive procedures in an attempt to make a child appear more like the opposite sex, like removing private parts, “would deprive the child of the fundamental right to procreate, which supports a finding of child abuse under the Family Code.”
“Because children are legally incompetent to consent to sterilization, procedures and treatments that result in a child’s sterilization are unauthorized and infringe on the child’s fundamental right to procreate,” Paxton continued.
“The lack of authority of a minor to consent to an irreversible sterilization procedure is consistent with other law. The federal Medicaid program does not allow for parental consent, has established a minimum age of 21 for consent to sterilization procedures, and imposes detailed requirements for obtaining that consent.”
Last August, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Jamie Masters published a letter asserting that “genital mutilation of a child through reassignment surgery is child abuse, subject to all rules and procedures pertaining to child abuse.”
Masters’ letter came after Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott requested that the agency “issue a determination of whether genital mutilation of a child for purposes of gender transitioning through reassignment surgery constitutes child abuse.”
This article features explicit material unsuitable for all readers.
Coaxing 10-year-old girls away from their parents, promising a fun and safe environment, and then forcing them to sleep in the same room as grown men is the kind of behavior you’d expect from a sexual predator. It’s child endangerment at best and traumatizing abuse at worst. Yet that’s exactly what California’s Los Alamitos Unified School District forced little girls at a school-organized science camp to do for three nights in San Bernardino, according to outraged parents.
“No parent should feel the way I feel after knowing what could have happened to my daughter,” parent Suzy Johnson told local news. “If I was aware of it and I had initialed something saying this was going to be done at this outdoor science camp, I would have kept my children home.”
When confronted about the sleeping arrangements, the camp’s defense was, “Per California law, we place staff in cabins they identify with,” and the two men refer to themselves as “they/them.”
While the science camp incident is enraging, it’s far from the first or only indication that government schools likely harm children more than they benefit them. Before entrusting their kids to a behemoth that has repeatedly subjected children to abuse, parents should demand proof that schools are trustworthy — and assume they aren’t until proven otherwise.
Public schools’ insane obsession with the transgender agenda has physically endangered young girls before. Just look to Loudoun County, where a boy in a skirt raped a young lady in the women’s bathroom and the school board covered it up to keep the incident from sinking their transgender bathroom policy. What else don’t parents know about?
When these far-left pipe dreams about erasing sex don’t subject kids to physical abuse, they often inflict mental abuse. Even in a red state like Idaho, a report earlier this month found that “School administrators in Coeur d’Alene manipulated an 11-year-old girl into believing she was a boy and should undergo gender transition surgery” behind her parents’ backs. “The elementary school counselor had coached the young girl into believing she was transsexual and instructed her how to tell her parents about her new identity,” the Idaho Freedom Foundation reported.
In Virginia, a public school made kindergarteners sit and listen to a “transgender rights advocate” — a man dressed as a woman who goes by “Sarah” — read them a book about a transgender teen.
In Iowa, a school district used the “Black Lives Matter at School Guiding Principles” to teach kids as young as four years old to “free[] ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking,” “dismantle cis-gender privilege,” and “disrupt[] the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.”
A school in a small Colorado town outside of Boulder showed elementary students a play about a transgender raven, accompanied by videos like “He, She, and They – What is Gender” and “No More Gender Roles.” The videos include conversations with a gender-confused teddy bear that conclude gender roles are “mean, they are not fun and they are big problems.” One parent of a first-grader reported that, after showing one of the videos, his daughter’s teacher paired kids up to talk about their preferred pronouns.
Leaked audio from a conference of California’s largest teachers union revealed teachers being instructed on how to stalk middle schoolers and coax them into LGBT groups behind their parents’ backs. “Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents,” Abigail Shrier reported.
School libraries like the one at Baird Middle School in Massachusetts feature sexually explicit books like “Sex Is A Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg. Not only does the book cover “subjects of transgender identity, intersex conditions, and masturbation,” its author is a sex shop owner who specifically targets kids.
A Rhode Island mom filed a police report over a local high school’s promotion of a gay porn book to minors in its library. The book “features discussion of gay sexual fantasies and is incredibly graphic, including scenes of gay men having sex and a scene of one man performing oral sex on another.”
These examples are only some of the incidents that have been brought to light — and they merely scratch the surface. Exposing vulnerable children to sexually explicit material and indoctrinating them to question their own identities, often against their parents’ wishes, is nothing less than mental abuse and exploitation.
A Harvard study in 2015 found youth who identified as transgender were at more than double risk for depression, anxiety, attempted suicide, and self-harm. Last year, Forbes reported that more than half — 52 percent — “of all transgender and nonbinary young people in the U.S. seriously contemplated killing themselves in 2020.” Even aside from students’ exposure to the trans agenda, the toxic environment of public schools has tragically been linked to child suicides, which have escalated in recent years.
This isn’t to say every student in the public school system will be tempted to suicide, subject to pornography, placed in danger of sexual assault, or mentally abused. There are wonderful, truth-loving teachers out there who remain in the system to do as much good as they can for children they care deeply about. I know several. But the examples from all across the country, from known crazies in California to small-town red state school districts, should be enough to convince parents to be wary. Especially of what schools don’t tell them.
Nothing should be more paramount for parents than protecting their children. If a stranger offers to babysit your child, you don’t accept the offer with the rationale that your child might be fine. You expect anyone to whom you entrust your child to first prove he is worthy of stewarding your most sacred possession. Public schools are no different, and the repeated instances proving their abuses should drive your trust even further away. Maybe, like many Americans, you don’t feel you have what you think are feasible alternatives. Or maybe your local school district is sheltered from some of the most radical exploitation. But it behooves you to verify that first before betting your child on it.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
The Biden administration continues to make bizarre recruiting decisions for top government jobs on the basis of toxic identity politics. A recent addition to President Joe Biden’s motley crew of dubious hires is drag queen Sam Brinton, who was tapped last month as the “Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy.”
Rather than touting his qualifications for the job, Brinton — who lists his pronouns as “they”/”them” — bragged on Twitter about his unique status as the “first gender fluid person in federal government leadership.”
In a biographical statement on an LGBT website provided by Brinton, he boasted about having “worn his stilettos to Congress to advise legislators about nuclear policy and to the White House, where he advised President Obama and Michelle Obama on LGBT issues.”
The bio continued: “He shows young men and women everywhere he goes that they can be who they are and gives them courage. Once, while he was walking around Disney World in 6 inch stilettos with his boyfriend, a young gay boy saw Sam with his boyfriend and started crying. He told his mother, ‘It’s true, Mom. WE can be our own princess here.’”
Brinton is an active member of the Washington, D.C., chapter of a drag queen society known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” the National Pulse reported Thursday.
The drag queen has referred to White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci as “Daddy Fauci” and even called him a “saint.”
There are also photos on social media where he displays his fondness for “pup play,” a sexual role-playing game.
In a 2016 interview with the LGBT-focused Metro Weekly magazine, Brinton discussed his fetish in detail.
“Pup and I have what I feel is one of the most ideally perfect connections between our personal and kink life,” he said. “Both of us have other partners, so we come into this space, and then we come out of it, knowing the boundaries of where your kink and non-kink relationships begin and end.”
Brinton acknowledged that others didn’t understand his activities.
“One of the hardest things about being a handler is that I’ve honestly had people ask, ‘Wait, you have sex with animals?’” he told Metro Weekly. “They believe it’s abusive, that it’s taking advantage of someone who may not be acting up to a level of human responsibility. …
“The other misperception is that I have some really messed up background, like, did I have some horrible childhood trauma that made me like to have sex with animals.”
This is who’s helping Biden run the country right now, which is in shambles amid record inflation, soaring crime, race wars and ongoing border invasions.
People can do whatever they want in the privacy of their homes (provided it’s not illegal or hurting anyone), but the fact that the kinky sex life of a high-level Department of Energy executive overshadows his qualifications is truly alarming. This is how empires crash and burn.
Under Biden, we are witnessing the real-time destruction of America — economically, culturally and socially. And we’re only in Year 2 of his reign.
Sports network ESPN has finally run coverage of Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer from the University of Pennsylvania. But both ESPN’s coverage and the general issue of having a transgender swimmer competing against women have sparked controversy and backlash from viewers. At first, ESPN was confronted for not covering Thomas enough and was called “cowardly” by Jason Whitlock at Blaze Media.
In mid-January Op-Ed titled, “ESPN isn’t man enough to even discuss transgender Penn swimmer Lia Thomas,” Whitlock called out the sports coverage leader for ignoring Thomas.
Comparing Thomas to “Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Colin Kaepernick rolled into one gender transition,” Whitlock noted that while the Ivy League and other universities had made announcements about Thomas competing in women’s swimming events, ESPN remained silent. Then ESPN finally ran an article about Thomas.
Written by reporter Katie Barnes, who is known for covering LGBT issues and women’s sports, the article highlighted how Thomas has been winning, even in the midst of protests against the fact that he was allowed to compete in races against women. Barnes looked at the policies and discussions taking place over the principles of transgender athletes in various sports and how the NCAA and other organizations are changing policies.
The NCAA revised its policy about the eligibility of transgender athletes. Instead of a blanket policy for all schools and sports, the NCAA decided to use the policies of each individual governing body, meaning that requirements will vary for different sports. The NCAA’s new policy also will require testosterone testing in the championship windows, beginning in 2022-23.
Barnes’ article also explained that, though Thomas has won individual events, he didn’t set any records.
“At Blodgett Pool, Thomas finished first in both of her individual events. But she didn’t set any records in either the 100 or 200 freestyle. She high-fived teammates and laughed with them between races. Despite the controversy continuing to swirl around her, Thomas turned in what is becoming a typical performance,” Barnes wrote.
But after ESPN ran the article, there was significant outcry on social media, as readers spoke up and many disagreed with the idea of a transgender athlete competing in women’s sports.
“Sidelining women in womens sports. Hope everyone is proud of themselves,” one Facebook commenter posted.
“In this case we have a male body racing female bodies. While I do not believe Lia Thomas switched to being a woman to dominate swimming, she has the same advantage over her competitors as a drug cheat would,” another user commented.
“ESPN cheers on the death of female sports. Shameful,” another posted.
“1st and foremost EVERYONE has the right do whatever makes them happy in regards to physical appearance and Identity. With that being said this is obviously unfair to natural born female athletes,” another Facebook user wrote. “It’s my understanding that fairness and equality for all are major pillars of the LGBTQ community. I don’t see either of these under the current format. There needs to be a 3rd division added or compete in the men’s division until we know more…”
Teammates of Thomas have also commented on the situation, though. Not all of them are comfortable with the fact that Thomas is competing against women. Speaking anonymously to the Washington Examiner, one teammate explained how the female swim team members were overlooked in this process.
Apparently, Thomas’ move from male to female swimming was in the works for quite some time and the university knew that the change was coming. But as this one Penn swimmer described, the university’s athletic department never asked those already on the team about adding Thomas.
“Lia swimming was a non-negotiable,” the swimmer said. “The school made it seem like they were trying to say, ‘Don’t even bother to come to us with your concerns or anything like that because we’re not going to help you.’ Or they don’t really care because ‘this is going to happen one way or the other.’”
The swimmer added how stressful it was to be put in this position, because if team members did have concerns, they felt like they couldn’t speak up.
“It just seems like if you say anything, everyone is just going to attack you and call you transphobic, and it’s not even true. We just want to have what we were promised by joining the swim team, which is fair competition and equal opportunities,” she said.
“It’s been really frustrating because we all agree, and I have yet to meet anyone or talk to anyone who thinks what is going on is OK. But yet somehow, these are the rules and allowed,” she added.
The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that though the whole team had been strongly advised not to talk to media about the issue, another teammate also came forward to complain.
As Thomas continues to compete and beat competitors by large margins (in one 1,650-yard freestyle event, Thomas beat his teammate by 38 seconds, the Mail reported), the controversy continues. From teammates to ESPN readers, there are a lot of people questioning the situation.
Abby Liebing is a Hillsdale College graduate with a degree in history. She has written for various outlets and enjoys covering foreign policy issues and culture.
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The family of a 12-year-old middle school student in Salinas, California, recently accused two teachers of secretly coaching the young girl’s gender transition behind their backs, according to videos posted online this week. During a Spreckels Union School District board meeting on Wednesday, the girl’s mother and grandfather sounded off on the district, alleging that school staff altered her name and pronouns without their consent and called Child Protective Services when they objected to her social transition. The family said that teachers didn’t even notify them after finding out their daughter was suicidal.
The girl’s mother, identified as Jessica Konen by the Epoch Times, alleged in her speech that her daughter’s clandestine transition occurred within an LGBTQ+ club at Buena Vista Middle School.
“I am outraged,” the mother said, asking, “Is this really barely coming to light?”
“How could you even allow this?” she continued. “You allowed these teachers to open their classrooms teaching predatorial information to a young child … that doesn’t even know how to comprehend it all.”
The speeches were also documented in a Twitter thread posted by the profile “Libs of TikTok.”
The school reportedly called the parents in for a meeting where they informed them that their daughter is trans. The teacher then proceeded to call CPS on them when they didn’t use the “correct” name and pronouns.
“How do you not know what is going on at your campuses?” the enraged mother went on to say, declaring, “You took away my ability to parent my child.”
The grandfather, identified as Gunter Konen, claimed during his speech that his granddaughter is “confused because she was coached” by the teachers.
“CPS was called on my daughter because she went into school to have a discussion with a teacher for hiding the fact that she was given a new name, a boy’s name,” he added, noting that to refer to a child as a boy simply because the child claims to be a boy is “vile nonsense.”
CPS later dropped the case, the Epoch Times reported.
“Kids are impressionable at that age,” the grandfather said, also suggesting that “we need God back in America. We need God back in schools.”
In the article, Shrier claimed that leaked audio from an October California Teachers Association conference showed Buena Vista Middle School teacher and LGBTQ club leader Lori Caldeira and fellow middle school teacher Kelly Baraki describing how they recruited students into the club and concealed the students’ activities from parents. The teachers reportedly admitted that they recruited kids into the club, in part, by stalking their Google searches and monitoring their conversations.
Outrage over the teachers’ behavior reportedly prompted the district to announce significant changes in November. In a letter to parents, the district announced that the school club, called UBU (“You Be You”), had been suspended and that teachers were no longer permitted to monitor students’ online activity, among other changes, according to KSBW-TV. Though it was not clear what action was taken against Caldeira and Baraki.
The letter only said: “Regarding the teachers involved, appropriate personnel steps are being taken to make sure such activities and comments will not be repeated.”
In an interview with Epoch Times prior to the school board meeting, Jessica Konen said her daughter was coaxed into joining the club when she was in sixth grade, where teachers began affirming bisexuality. By seventh grade, she was called into the school for a meeting with her daughter, a teacher, and the school principal. There, the teacher informed her that her daughter was “trans fluid.”
“They kept looking at me angrily because I kept saying ‘she,’ and that it was going to take me time to time to process everything,” Jessica Konen said. “I was very confused. … I was very upset. I was blindsided — completely blindsided.”
Within a few days of the meeting, the King City Police Department reportedly showed up at the family’s residence, saying a complaint had been made to CPS.
Konen said that her daughter is now attending a different school.
University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas — formerly known as Will Thomas — has garnered national media attention in recent weeks for shattering collegiate swim records that were previously held by biological women, sparking fresh accusations of unfair competition.
Thomas, who competed as a male at the school during her freshman, sophomore, and junior years, decided to undergo a year of testosterone suppression treatment ahead of her senior year in order to compete as a female. To no one’s surprise, the biological male is dominating the competition.
But it’s one thing to hear about Thomas’ newfound domination, and another thing entirely to see it. A new video that surfaced online shows just how wide the gap is between Thomas and the women competing against her.
“Just to show you how absurd this is. Here’s the trans swimmer ‘Lia’ Thomas crushing all of the female competitors by 40 seconds,” Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh tweeted in a caption to the video. “This is what that looks like in real time. A total farce.”
Just to show you how absurd this is. Here’s the trans swimmer “Lia” Thomas crushing all of the female competitors by 40 seconds. This is what that looks like in real time. A total farce.
The video showcases the tail end of Thomas’s incredible performance during the 1,650-yard freestyle race at the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio, during which Thomas bested the second-place finisher by an eye-popping 38 seconds.
During the video, the narrator quips that “the lefties have just gone a little too far with this one” while pointing out how fast Thomas swam in relation to the competition. He then painstakingly points out the numerous times that female swimmers make their turns and continue racing while Thomas rests having finished well ahead of them.
“Thomas is a 6-foot 3-inch strapping young man coursing with testosterone and here he is in a girls swimsuit competing with the girls,” the narrator says.
Since the story started receiving national attention, at least two teammates of Thomas’s have spoken out about the unfair situation. One anonymous teammate said last week that having Thomas on the team is something that “secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do.”
“When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake,” the team member told Outkick.
Another teammate expressed that the entire team is “angry” over the situation.
“They feel so discouraged because no matter how much work they put in it, they’re going to lose,”she explained. “Usually, they can get behind the blocks and know they out-trained all their competitors and they’re going to win and give it all they’ve got.”
“Now they’re having to go behind the blocks knowing no matter what, they do not have the chance to win. I think that it’s really getting to everyone,” the female swimmer continued.
The team member added that amazingly Thomas, unfazed by the criticism, has been bragging about being No. 1 in the country amongst female swimmers.
“Well, obviously she’s No. 1 in the country because she’s at a clear physical advantage after having gone through male puberty and getting to train with testosterone for years,” the swimmer said. “Of course you’re No. 1 in the country when you’re beating a bunch of females. That’s not something to brag about.”
Thomas responded to some of the criticism recently in a podcast interview with SwimSwam.
Penn’s Lia Thomas Opens Up On Journey, Transition To Women’s Swimmingyoutu.be
It is not an exaggeration to say that the United States is in crisis about the meanings of the words sex and gender. We are all victims of this crisis, but the primary victims are women and girls. Throughout U.S. law, the word sex is being completely redefined to mean “gender identity” or “transgender.” Congress is doing it. The Biden administration is doing it. The federal courts are doing it.
Most Americans have no comprehension of the implications of this, due to no fault of their own. Very few media outlets will permit us to talk about it. Yet feminists have been talking about it for a long time. The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) has been talking about it since its founding in 2013 (I served on the board of WoLF from 2016-2020).
Jennifer Bilek talked about it in this publication in her 2018 essay, “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” She continues to talk about it in her outstanding 11th Hour Blog. The Women’s Human Rights Campaign (WHRC) has been talking about it globally since 2019 and in the United States since 2020 by advancing the aims of the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, which has been signed by more than 20,000 people and hundreds of organizations (I currently serve as the president of the U.S. chapter).
The mainstream media steadfastly ignores all of this and is engaged in a concerted effort to hide it from Americans. But Americans are waking up, due in large part to the steadfast work of radical feminists or, as some people might say, “TERFs.” The acronym “TERF,” said to mean “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” was created by misogynists to demean those of us who fight for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. Many feminists have chosen to reclaim the acronym, arguing that it stands for “Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools” or “Totally Excellent Radical Feminist.”
In October of this year, comedian Dave Chappelle made headlines when he proclaimed that he is “Team TERF” during his Netflix show “The Closer.” The hashtag #TeamTERF immediately started trending on Twitter. Chappelle did this in the context of defending British author J.K. Rowling, who has faced relentless abuse for her defense of women and girls and abuse survivors. If fighting for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls makes me a TERF, then so be it.
Many people will be angry with me for publishing in The Federalist because The Federalist is a conservative-leaning publication. I am not a conservative and never have been. I registered to vote as a Democrat in 1990. Since then, the only time I was not a registered Democrat was during a brief period in 2007 when I was registered Green (I re-registered as a Democrat so I could vote in the 2008 Democratic primary and have remained so ever since).
Still, I am grateful to The Federalist for publishing this because no one else will. That’s because U.S. media has been completely corrupted by an industry that is hell-bent on persuading ordinary Americans that there is such a thing as “gender identity” and that some people “are transgender.”
The truth is that “gender identity” does not exist in any real, material sense, and “transgender” is simply a made-up concept that is used to justify all kinds of atrocities, such as convicted male rapists and murderers being housed in women’s prisons with vulnerable women, men being permitted to parade around with erect penises in women’s sections of spas, and men participating in women’s sports. They are being permitted to do all of this on the basis that they have a so-called “female gender identity.”
All of “gender identity” and “transgender” politics is a men’s rights movement intended to objectify women’s bodies and erase us as a class. The entire edifice is a lie. It is left-wing misogyny on steroids.
Democratic Party leadership will not permit discussion about this, anywhere. But I assure readers that there are countless rank and file Democrats who are furious about it. I hear from them every day. Democrats are disgusted that party leadership is promoting the teaching of “gender identity” in schools down to the kindergarten level, celebrating the mutilation of healthy children’s bodies, and cheering on performances of “drag queen story hour” in public libraries.
The Democratic Party of today looks nothing like the Democratic Party that I was proud to be a part of just about all my life. Many Democrats share my despair. If the Republican Party manages to nominate just about anyone who is a decent human being for the presidency in 2024 (hint: “Grab ‘em by the p-ssy” guy is not included in this category), many Democrats will vote Republican.
Gender ideology is one of the reasons Democrats lost House seats in 2020 and one of the reasons Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in Virginia this month. I was proud to stand with parents in Loudoun County, and grateful to The Federalist for covering it (that coverage eventually got picked up in the U.K. via The Daily Mail). Gender will be one of the reasons that Democrats will lose more congressional seats in 2022 as well as the presidency in 2024.
I know people who have left the Democratic Party because of gender and become Independents. I know one woman who left the Democratic Party because of gender and registered Republican. I choose to remain a Democrat because I continue to hope the party will reverse course, as unlikely as that appears to be at this time, and have done my best to warn party leadership about what is coming here and here and here.
I am a second-wave feminist and a Democrat. I stand for the rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls. These cannot be protected if sex is redefined incomprehensibly to include so-called “gender identity.”
Feminists have a saying: we cannot protect women and girls on the basis of sex if we cannot say what sex is. My hope is that lawmakers across the political aisle will get a grip and right the wrongs that have been perpetrated in the name of “gender identity.”
Every single human being is either female or male. No one “is transgender.” It’s long past time that lawmakers across the political aisle and members of corporate media said so.
Parents in Leon County, Florida, are suing the school district for holding a meeting with their teenage daughter about her chosen gender identity without their knowledge or consent. The parents have warned that the district’s LGBT policies create a “wedge” between students and their parents.
January and Jeffrey Littlejohn filed a lawsuit against the school board, Superintendent of Schools Rocky Hanna and Assistant Superintendent, Equity Officer and Title IX Compliance Coordinator Kathleen Rodgers in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on Oct. 18.
In the lawsuit, the Littlejohns accuse the defendants of violating their substantive due process right to direct the education and upbringing of their children under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and other rights guaranteed to them by state and federal law by excluding them from a meeting with school officials discussing their 13-year-old daughter’s gender identity.
Vernadette Broyles of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, a legal organization created two-and-a-half years ago “specifically to stand with and help parents who are in some way or the other … seeking to protect the well-being … of their child from gender identity ideology,” is one of the attorneys representing the Littlejohns in the litigation.
In an interview with The Christian Post, January Littlejohn and Broyles elaborated on the lawsuit and the events that led up to it.
Littlejohn explained that her daughter, who is now a high school student, began undergoing treatment for gender confusion in the summer before the start of the 2020-’21 school year. She attributed her daughter’s gender confusion to peer pressure from her “friend group because three other children in that same friend group had come out as nonbinary or transgender within the previous six months.”
While Littlejohn told one of her daughter’s teachers at Deer Lake Middle School that she was “seeking mental health counseling and she was experiencing distress that we weren’t affirming her at home because we didn’t feel like it was in her best interest,” she did not expect the school to begin referring to her daughter using they/them pronouns and give her the option to sleep in the same quarters as her male classmates on an overnight school field trip.
Littlejohn only found out that the school had taken such action because her daughter revealed to her that she’d had a meeting about her “nickname,” with the concerned parent telling CP that “that’s kind of what we refer to it as.”
She said her daughter then asked, ‘“isn’t it funny that they asked me what restroom I wanted to use?”’
“My daughter has ADHD … and so to her, this seemed like the silliest thing in the world that they asked her which restroom she preferred to use. That was my first indication that the school had met with her without … notifying my husband or myself,” she said.
“I immediately called her guidance counselor. The guidance counselor said she needed to call me back. She called me back with the assistant principal on the line. So right then and there, I knew something … felt different about the situation because I had spoken to the guidance counselor multiple times in the past because of my daughter’s 504 plan … for her ADHD.”
Littlejohn accused the school of “colluding with my daughter to deceive us so that we would never have known she was going by an alternate name.”
The concerned mother also insisted that she “absolutely should have been at that meeting” and expressed disbelief that the school that she volunteered at did not partner with them. “I was volunteer of the year at that school. It wasn’t like I was an unknown parent.”
Littlejohn recalled the detrimental impact of the school’s decision to hold meetings with her daughter about her gender identity confusion without her knowledge or consent, saying: “It created a huge wedge between our daughter and us, as her parents. We have worked very hard over the past year-and-a-half to stabilize the situation through counseling, and I do feel like she’s on a better path at this time.”
Broyles told CP that the purpose of the lawsuit was to get the school district to “rescind the guidance … that was in place that … basically instructed school officials not to inform parents when a child begins to indicate a transgender or LGBTQ+ identity.” The attorney expressed particular concern that the guidance implied that “outing a student to their parents could be dangerous to a student’s well-being.”
“Every time I think about this lawsuit, it really hits me: The district guidance had the message to parents that you don’t have the best interests of your child in mind. It sends the message that children need to … be protected from parents rather than by parents, and that is an earth-shattering message that cannot stand,” Broyles asserted.
Specifically, the guidance, part of the “LCS Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide,” warned that “Outing a student, especially to parents, can be very dangerous to the [student’s] health and well-being” because “some students are not able to be out at home because their parents are unaccepting of LGBTQ+ people out.”
The guidance maintains that “as many as 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ+, many of whom have been rejected by their families for being LGBTQ+,” suggesting that “outing students to their parents can literally make them homeless.”
“We are seeking that guidance to be permanently removed and replaced with new guidance that complies with the Parents’ Bill of Rights there in Florida as well as the Florida and United States Constitution that honors the parents’ right to make decisions for their children,” Broyles added. “It’s really important to recognize that affirming a child’s discordant gender identity … involves a significant mental health decision that affects the well-being of children … and with potentially lifelong consequences.”
The lawsuit, as summarized by Broyles, is asking the school district to implement new guidance requiring school officials to notify parents whenever their child “expresses gender discordance, gender confusion, a different identity other than their physical, biological sex” and “new policies that provide public notice and a public hearing regarding the new guidance through the school board.” Additionally, the Littlejohns are seeking “some sort of monetary damages for the … pain and suffering and … the impacts this has had on their family.”
Broyles stressed that the situation facing the Littlejohns is not unique: “This violation of parental rights is driving a wedge between parents and their children by school officials. … It affects parents … all throughout the political spectrum on both political parties or independents, whether it’s Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics. … We’ve spoken to almost virtually every stripe of parent.”
The attorney maintained that the Child and Parental Rights Campaign is working on several similar cases: “We hear almost weekly from parents who have … something similar happening to them and their children.”
“This same guidance I described to you is present on the websites of at least 11 other school districts throughout Florida,” Broyles said. She further noted that the “Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Student Support Plan” included in the “LCS Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Nonconforming and Questioning Support Guide” is also on the ACLU’s website.
“A lot of these documents are already out there and school boards, based on what I’ve been told, simply adopt those and put their name on them,” Broyles added.
“That’s why there seems to be the exact same guidance in multiple counties in the state of Florida and all over the country in all 50 states.”
Littlejohn told CP that she’s aware of other parents in Leon County that have found themselves in the same situation as herself.
“A lot of the parents are really scared to speak out or they don’t feel like they can speak out because it would jeopardize the very fragile relationship they have with their child who’s experiencing distress related to their gender.” She added that she speaks to other families “almost weekly to try to help them understand the situation at hand and help them get resources.”
She also pushed back on the claim that the school was conducting a “benign intervention”: “It’s the first step toward medical transitioning, which is why it is so imperative that parents be included [in] any discussion with their child that could impact the short-term and long-term mental and physical well-being of their child, whether it’s this issue or any issue. So fundamentally, this is about parental rights and what the schools can and cannot do … without their permission.”
Littlejohn emphasized that despite the harm this experience has caused to her and her family, “it’s made our faith grow” as Christians. She seconded Broyles’ assertion that “this issue affects all kinds of families” and “people of all faiths including atheists.”
In the time since officials at Deer Lake Middle School first met with Littlejohn’s daughter to discuss her gender identity, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the Parents’ Bill of Rights into law. The measure mandates that “important information relating to a child should not be withheld, either inadvertently or purposely, from his or her parent, including information relating to the minor child’s health, well-being, and education, while the minor child is in the custody of the school district.”
Additionally, the law directs school districts to work with parents, teachers and administrators to “develop and adopt a policy to promote parental involvement in the public school system.”
Superintendent Hanna reacted to the Littlejohns’ lawsuit in a statement to news outlet WCTV: “We certainly want to include parents, and with the Parental Bill of Rights, I understand and respect that, but we also have to respect the rights of the individuals, safety of the children we care for each and every day” because “while the children are under our care we act in loco parentis, on behalf of a parent while they’re under our care.”
The lawsuit follows a year of unsuccessful efforts to convince the school district to change its policy. Littlejohn insisted that “We tried to do this without filing a lawsuit, which was never our intention.”
While the complaint mentions that the district removed the guide from the publicly accessible portion of its website, it alleges that the district did not comply with the Littlejohns’ request to “publish on the Website a written statement that parents would be notified when their child/children express a discordant gender identity and included in meetings or discussions with their child/children regarding their gender identity.”
The complaint contends that “there is no indication on the website or otherwise that the Guide has been rescinded, only a notation that it is being revised.” Additionally, it states that “no revised guidance regarding parental notification has been published or provided to Plaintiffs.” The website of the Leon County Schools’ Equity and Diversity Department has a section devoted to the LCS LGBTQ+ Support Guide, which informs visitors that “[the] Guide is currently being reviewed and is under revision.”
The lawsuit against Leon County Schools comes at a time when parents have expressed an increasing amount of unease with some of the material their children are exposed to in school. In recent weeks, outraged parents and community members in several states have descended on school board meetings to condemn the inclusion of sexually explicit material in books available to students in school libraries and writing prompts in a textbook used in a college-level English class.
Rachel Levine, a trans-identified nominee for Assistant Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, testifies at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on February 25, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Levine previously served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health. | Caroline Brehman-Pool/Getty Images
Twitter has suspended the account of a Republican congressman who posted a tweet noting that President Joe Biden’s U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine, who identifies as transgender, is a man. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., was suspended Saturday after posting a tweet in response to Levine — who went by the name Richard before he began identifying as female — becoming the first trans-identified four-star officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
Banks has been temporarily blocked from using his Twitter account until he agrees to delete the tweet calling Levine a man, according to NBC News. In the now-deleted tweet posted Tuesday, Banks lamented that “the title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.” Twitter claimed that the tweet violated its hateful conduct policy, which prohibits tweets that engage in “misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
For his part, Banks took to his Instagram account to post a statement denouncing the actions of Twitter, saying that the social media site was censoring “a basic truth.”
“My tweet was a statement of fact. Big Tech doesn’t have to agree with me, but they shouldn’t be able to cancel me. If they silence me, they will silence you,” he warned.
“We can’t allow Big Tech to prevent us from telling the truth. When Republicans take back the House next year, we must restore honesty to our public forums and hold Big Tech accountable.”View this post on Instagram
Levine was the previous secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March to be assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services in a 52-48 vote.
In a tweet still visible as of Monday morning, Banks criticized the hailing of Levine as the first “female” four-star officer at the corps, arguing that it disrespected biological females.
“Calling someone that was born and lived as a man for 54 years the first ‘female’ four-star officer is an insult to every little girl who dreams of breaking glass ceilings one day,”tweeted Banks on Oct. 19.
HHS deputy secretary Andrea Palm swears in Levine, with @Surgeon_General Vivek Murthy (a vice admiral himself) as witness.
Levine now the first openly transgender four-star officer across any of the eight uniformed services, which include Army, Navy and Air Force. pic.twitter.com/ne2xBdsFk9
“May this appointment today be the first of many more to come,” stated Levine. “Diversity makes us stronger.”
Banks is not the first person to face repercussions from Twitter for asserting that Levine is a biological male. On Jan. 20, the day of Biden’s inauguration, radio host Michael Brown sent out a tweet asking, “Will I get punished by Twitter for saying that, in God’s sight, ‘Rachel’ Levine (nominated by Biden to be his assistant secretary for HHS) is a man?” Shortly after that, Brown was locked out of his account for 12 hours.
A recent report from a media watchdog reveals that censorship of conservative politicians is not an uncommon phenomenon. The Media Research Center found that censorship of Republican members of Congress outnumbers censorship of Democrats in Congress by a ratio of 54 to 1. Follow Michael Gryboski on Twitter or Facebook
In 2014, Rolling Stone published a story about a female student named “Jackie” who claimed she was raped at a fraternity party at the University of Virginia.
“The 9,000-word story prompted a wave of outrage and revulsion,” said the Washington Post. The fraternity in question was graffitied within hours, protesters descended upon the campus in Charlottesville, Va., the university president suspended Greek life until the following year, and elected officials condemned the incident.
“University of Virginia Contends With Outrage Over Horrific Rape Reports,” Time Magazine headlined. CNN reported on the story and the university’s swift reaction to it, as did ABC News. The Huffington Post also picked up the story.
The story, we now know, later unraveled, leading to a retraction from Rolling Stone and massive defamation lawsuits. But not before the appalling tale of a helpless young woman being brutally assaulted on an educational campus shook Americans’ sensibilities. No one was disagreeing that, if true, the incident deserved horror, outrage, and efforts to try and keep such abuses from happening again.
The Story We Should All Be Up In Arms About
Just seven years later, a similarly harrowing tale has emerged just 100 or so miles away from U-Va., in Loudoun County, Va. An investigation from The Daily Wire earlier this month reported allegations from Loudoun County father Scott Smith that in May, “a boy allegedly wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at nearby Stone Bridge High School, where he sexually assaulted Smith’s ninth-grade daughter.”
“A boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio, related to an incident that day at that school,” according to Smith’s attorney.
But instead of receiving national outrage across the political and media landscape, the alleged incident was reportedly covered up by the Loudoun County School Board for months. In a June meeting, board members insisted they didn’t know of any such assaults. After showing up to a school board meeting in protest, Smith was arrested and smeared as a “domestic terrorist.”
Days after the Daily Wire investigation broke, another report alleged the school district had been failing to report sexual assault claims for years. Meanwhile, LCPS appears to have quietly transferred the alleged rapist to another school, where he has since been accused of another sexual assault of a female student.
Where Is The Outrage?
Where is the outrage? A search for “Scott Smith Loudoun” returns zero results on the Washington Post’s website, despite Loudoun County’s close proximity to the Post’s home city. On Tuesday, the Post finally published something on the story, but failed to mention Smith by name and initially failed to admit that the alleged attacker identified as “gender fluid.”
A search for “Scott Smith Loudoun” or “Loudoun sexual assault” returned no results from The New York Times on Wednesday. The extent to which CNN covered the story was to say “[Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn] Youngkin on Tuesday promised action following parental outrage over two recent alleged assaults in public schools in the state’s Loudoun County,” immediately after a paragraph of damage control for Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe’s statement that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Can you imagine if, instead of discovering holes in the U-Va. story, additional coverage had revealed that the school had been covering up other sexual assault allegations for years? Or, if the allegations in the Rolling Stone story had been true, can you imagine if U-Va. had quietly moved the rapists to another fraternity and tried to cover the whole thing up? Or tried to smear Jackie and her family as “domestic terrorists”?
The Loudoun County incident has all the ingredients of a horrifying scandal worthy of the front pages of every newspaper in the country. It should provoke our outrage, not as conservatives, but as caring and compassionate human souls whose sympathies are pricked by the horrors allegedly endured by an innocent 15-year-old girl.
If We Can’t Agree Rape Is Bad, What Can We Agree On?
Ensuring the safety of young girls — in their places of learning and elsewhere — should not be controversial. But the loudest voices on the left, the same ones who screamed “Me Too” from the rooftops of their Hollywood mansions, are too allegiant to the fringe demands of transgenderism to speak up. Many voices in the middle, even, seem too cowardly to come to the defense of young women like Smith’s daughter.
In a widening partisan divide, if we can’t agree that young girls being raped at school is an outrage, what can we agree on? Does the left hate conservatives with such vitriol that, once voices on the right speak up for a young girl’s right to bodily safety, that issue is suddenly anathema, tainted by the fingerprints of concerned parents slandered as domestic terrorists?
Plenty of other common-sense perspectives that any Democrat nominee would have supported up to a couple of years ago have suddenly become “radical” conservative positions too: funding police departments, not segregating kids in school based on race, having international borders, or allowing people to make their own medical decisions without government coercion. Any of these should have been enough to make Americans stop and wonder why the rules of the game are changing so drastically — and who is changing them.
But even for those who had yet to notice, the harrowing tale from Loudoun County Public Schools — and the subsequent shrug that legacy media, Democrats, and the Me Too crowd gave it — should settle that the biggest war in America right now isn’t between Republicans and Democrats, nor between blustering, blundering congressmen battling over whether to sell your children’s future for $3.5 trillion or $1 trillion.
The biggest war in America is between the allegiances we’ve always taken for granted — those of the family, church, and local community — and a conglomerate of forces that will stop at nothing to break them down. Sacrificing a 15-year-old girl’s right to basic safety at her school on the altar of fringe identity politics is just part of that fight.
Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
It’s a phone call every parent dreads receiving. Earlier this year, Virginia father Scott Smith was notified his 15-year-old daughter had been sexually assaulted. While that news was horrific, little did Smith know this would just be the start of a nightmarish series of events in which he would end up being cast as the villain. He can thank Democrats for enabling the whole outrageous affair.
The saga began back on May 28 at Loudoun County’s Stone Bridge High School, the sheriff’s office confirmed, where Smith was summoned by school officials. Smith told The Daily Wire he learned his daughter had allegedly been assaulted in a girls’ restroom by a boy wearing a skirt. (According to some reports, the boy identifies as “gender-fluid.”) Smith said school officials told him they intended to handle the incident in-house, instead of through the police and courts. After Smith became understandably upset at this callous and wholly improper decision not to involve law enforcement, he says school officials calls the police on him.
Fortunately, Smith was not arrested that day, but the story did not end there. A month later, he attended a Loudoun County School Board meeting to protest a proposed policy that would, among other things, allow students to access whatever restroom or locker room corresponds with their self-identified sex.
Concerned parents argued the policy would take privacy and safety from girls. LCPS Superintendent Scott Ziegler responded, “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.” Smith couldn’t believe his ears. Later, a conversation between a left-leaning parent and Smith grew heated when the other parent implied Smith was lying about his daughter. This time, police did arrest him and video of the incident went viral. Overnight, Smith became the poster boy of supposedly dangerous parents. The National School Boards Association even specifically pointed to him in the now-infamous letter to the Biden administration, arguing that distraught parents ought to be seen as “domestic terrorists.”
The full truth about what had happened to Smith’s daughter did not become public until this past week: The sexual assault committed against her was no anomaly. Not only that, it was the direct result of policies promoted and advanced by Democrats who are willing to sacrifice the bodies, minds, and souls of innocent children to protect leftist gender ideology from criticism.
The prime culprits of the Smith family’s tragedy are dictates like Virginia’s “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools.” Such dictates — disarmingly labeled “policies” — elevate subjective “gender identity” over sex, allowing male students to participate in girls’ sports, lodge with girls on overnight school trips, and, yes, access girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.
This is far from a new project. Democrats have been attempting to impose their gender insanity on the rest of the country since at least the Obama administration, when the U.S. Department of Education threatened schools with a loss of federal funding if they did not implement such policies. Unfortunately, weak Republican governors like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem have also been complicit through their refusal to meaningfully resist this agenda.
Concerned parents and others have fought this effort, arguing these changes would put girls in particular at risk to potential predators. Sespite Democrats’ best attempts at gaslighting, this is exactly what’s happened, and not just in Virginia. In November 2017, a five-year-old girl in Georgia was allegedly sexually assaulted in her school bathroom after the school introduced a new transgender policy. Her case, Thomas v. City Schools of Decatur et al, is still making its way through the state’s courts.
Still, Democrats and their left-wing allies refuse to even acknowledge this outcome of their transgender policies. After claiming there had been no assault in a school restroom, the Loudoun County School Board passed its new transgender policy in August. The alleged perpetrator was reportedly transferred to a different high school where, earlier this month, he was reportedly charged with sexually assaulting yet another girl. Still, the corporate media blackout of the story persists, while the Biden administration and Democrat politicians — and their henchmen in Big Tech and the press — continue to vilify ordinary parents like Smith.
Democrats’ true priorities are clear. Despite past “believe all women” rhetoric, their party’s ideology about sex has driven them to summarily toss aside the safety of girls in their campaign to normalize crazed gender ideology. As for the fundamental right of parents to choose how their children are raised, Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe last month spelled out where he and his Democrat comrades stand: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
To stop the left’s nefarious agenda, parents and pro-family Americans must become politically engaged and toss out bad elected officials. If this doesn’t happen soon, Scott Smith’s nightmare could be endured by many others around the country.
Terry Schilling is the executive director at American Principles Project.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
The skirt-wearing male student at the center of a purported sexual assault that recently took place in a vacant school classroom was previously placed under electronic surveillance for another sexual assault, according to reports.
Loudoun County commonwealth’s attorney Buta Biberaj on Wednesday announced that the same 15-year-old has been charged in both crimes.
According to a Wednesday report from Newsweek, the male Loudoun County, Virginia, high school student accused of assaulting a female student in a school classroom was reportedly under court-ordered electronic surveillance for a previous sexual assault charge when the assault incident took place.
The outlet noted that it is unclear at the time of this reporting as to why the 15-year-old male student was permitted on school property after having been charged with sexually assaulting a fellow student in a bathroom just five months prior to the new incident.
The unnamed teen was accused last week of sexual assault after he reportedly forced a female victim into an empty classroom at Broad Run High School in Ashburn, Virginia, where he reportedly “held her against her will and inappropriately touched her.”
The student, just five months earlier, was arrested for reportedly sexually assaulting a female student while wearing a skirt in another Ashburn-area school bathroom in May.
Authorities in May charged the teen with two counts of forcible sodomy for the purported bathroom assault.
He is currently being held in the Loudoun County Juvenile Detention Center, according to a report from WTOP-TV.about:blank
WTOP reported that the teen was due to appear in court this week regarding the May incident, but the date has been rescheduled due to the filing of the second charge.
In a Wednesday statement, the Loudoun County School Board said that police are investigating the incident.
“Loudoun County Public Schools is aware of the media and social media reports concerning alleged sexual assaults at two of our high school campuses,” a portion of the statement said. “Principals are legally required to report to the local law enforcement agency any act, including sexual assault, that may constitute a felony offense. That process was followed with respect to these allegations.”
The statement added, “Furthermore, LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault. LCPS does impose interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the original incident, deter retaliation, and preserve the integrity of the investigation and resolution process.”
Critics have lambasted the school board, accusing it of covering up the abuse, and parents have said that the school board was complicit in the assault.
Scott Smith, father of the female student assaulted in May, recently announced that prosecutors told him to remain quiet about the case in order to help the case move forward.
Smith complied, but when parents objected to a new trans bathroom policy within the school district, officials denied any incidents of assault.
“The predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler said in June. “We don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
In its Wednesday statement, the district added that the board was not aware of any details of the accusations.
“School Board members are typically not given details of disciplinary matters,” the statement insisted. “The board may be obligated to consider long-term suspensions or expulsions and must ensure that students have not been deprived of due process. Consequently, members of the Loudon County School Board were not aware of the specific details of this incident until it was reported in media outlets earlier this week.”
You can read more on the background of the case here.
Loudoun County Public Schools claims the school board did not know details of horrific sexual abuse allegations
The school district accused of covering up horrific sexual abuse at one of their schools released a lengthy statement Wednesday denying that the school board knew the details of the case.
Loudoun County resident Scott Smith said that his daughter was raped on May 28 by a boy allegedly wearing a skirt in a restroom at Stone Bridge High School. He said that he was told by prosecutors to stay quiet about the case publicly in order to help the prosecution case move forward.
When parents later objected to a new transgender restroom policy at the school district, officials denied any incidents of sexual assault had occurred.
“The predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” said Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler in June. “We don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
On June 22 at a school board meeting, Smith got into an altercation with a woman who he says was accusing his daughter of lying about the assault. The incident was used by the National School Board Association in their demand to the Department of Justice that threats to school boards be investigated as “domestic violence.”
Although the incident remains under investigation, the details of the horrific accusations were documented in a report by the Daily Wire.
On Wednesday, the school district responded to the controversy in a statement, which cited two assaults.
“Loudoun County Public Schools is aware of the media and social media reports concerning alleged sexual assaults at two of our high school campuses,” the statement read.
Principals are legally required to report to the local law enforcement agency any act, including sexual assault, that may constitute a felony offense,” the statement continued. “That process was followed with respect to these allegations.”
The statement went on to say that LCPS was not allowed to investigate the matter until after a criminal investigation by police is completed.
“Furthermore, LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault,” the statement added. “LCPS does impose interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the original incident, deter retaliation, and preserve the integrity of the investigation and resolution process.”
The district went on to say that the board was not aware of the details of the sexual assault accusations.
“School Board members are typically not given details of disciplinary matters. The board may be obligated to consider long-term suspensions or expulsions and must ensure that students have not been deprived of due process,” the statement claimed.
“Consequently, members of the Loudon County School Board were not aware of the specific details of this incident until it was reported in media outlets earlier this week,” the statement concluded. “We are unable to locate any records that indicate that Scott Smith had registered in advance to speak at the June 22, 2021 board meeting.”
Outraged parents demanded the resignation of Superintendent Ziegler at a school board meeting Tuesday after more details of the harrowing case were revealed.
Here’s more about the Loudon schools scandal:
Va. school district claims it followed protocol amid reports 2 girls were sexually assaulted by trans student
By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter| Wednesday, October 13, 2021
A parent speaks at a Loudoun County School Board meeting in Virginia on in October 2021 to demand the resignation of Superintendent Scott Ziegler. | Screenshot: Fox News
A Virginia school district is defending its response to two sexual assault allegations after it was accused of covering up one of the assaults because it raised questions about the potential consequences of a policy passed in August allowing students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity.
Loudoun County Public Schools released a statement Wednesday acknowledging that it is “aware of the media and social media reports concerning alleged sexual assaults at two of our high school campuses.” The district maintained that the proper “process was followed with respect to these allegations.”
On Aug. 10, the Loudoun County School Board approved Policy 8040, allowing trans-identified students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity instead of their biological sex.
The Daily Wire reported the May 28 sexual assault of Scott Smith’s 15-year-old daughter at Loudoun County’s Stone Bridge High School Monday. The publication reported a biological boy who identifies as a girl alleged to have been wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom and sexually assaulted Smith’s ninth-grade daughter.
Although juvenile records are sealed, Smith’s lawyer, Elizabeth Lancaster, told the news outlet that the student faces two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy and one count of forcible fellatio related to the incident at school.
As Smith noted during an appearance on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” Tuesday night, a “concerned parent” contacted him and his wife Friday night to ask for the name of the boy who sexually assaulted his daughter.
When Smith refused to divulge that information and asked for the reason behind the inquiry, the caller informed him that “there was another assault at Broad Run High School and the rumor is that it’s the same boy.”
“Within a half an hour, it was confirmed that yes, this did happen,” he added. From there, Smith decided to speak out publicly about what happened to his daughter.
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office released a statement last week announcing that “a teenager from Ashburn has been charged with sexual battery and abduction of a fellow student at Broad Run High School.”
“The investigation determined on the afternoon of October 6, the 15-year-old suspect forced the victim into an empty classroom where he held her against her will and inappropriately touched her,” the statement from the sheriff’s office reads.
The reaction to The Daily Wire reporting was swift and immediate. In video footage obtained by Fox News, outraged parents confronted the Loudoun County School Board and Superintendent of Schools Scott Ziegler at a school board meeting Tuesday night.
“When is Dr. Ziegler and this board going to be held accountable?” one parent asked. “What did you think was going to happen when you pushed porn into the classrooms and into the libraries and let boys into girls’ bathrooms?”
Another parent maintained that “there is something seriously wrong with a system that prioritizes reporting a rape internally to the superintendent so that they can control the narrative instead of calling the police.” A third parent accused the district of “hiding evidence from every parent in LCPS about a heinous sexual assault of a student that occurred in a bathroom so you could pass radical Policy 8040.”
In its statement Wednesday, Loudoun County Public Schools offered clarification of its responses in the cases of these two sexual assault allegations. The school district contends that police were contacted to investigate the claims of sexual assault.
“Principals are legally required to report to the local law enforcement agency any act, including sexual assault, that may constitute a felony offense [under Virginia law],” the school district’s statement reads. “That process was followed with respect to these allegations.”
The statement further adds that the Loudoun County Sherriff’s Office was “contacted within minutes of receiving the initial report on May 28.”
“Once a matter has been reported to law enforcement, LCPS does not begin its investigation until law enforcement advises LCPS that it has completed the criminal investigation,” the statement continued. “LCPS has cooperated and continues to cooperate with law enforcement.”
The school district stated that it is “prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault.”
“LCPS does impose interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the original incident, deter retaliation, and preserve the integrity of the investigation and resolution process. LCPS has complied and continues to comply with its obligations under Title IX.”
The school district also maintains that members of the school board “were not aware of the specific details of this incident until it was reported in media outlets earlier this week.”
The LCPS statement didn’t address the fact that the perpetrator of the sexual assaults was a trans-identified male and that one of the incidents took place in a girls’ bathroom. The district also declined to weigh in on parental concerns about Policy 8040.
Concerns about Policy 8040 predate the reporting about the May 28 assault on Smith’s daughter.
On June 22, slightly more than three weeks after the sexual assault of Smith’s daughter, a school board meeting in Loudoun County made national headlines as parents forcefully spoke out against a proposed school district policy that would allow trans-identified students to use facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
Scott Smith, whose daughter was raped by a male wearing a skirt in a girls’ bathroom at her high school in Loudoun County, Virginia, appears on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” Oct. 12, 2021. | Screenshot: Fox News
At least two parents were arrested after the meeting was declared an “unlawful assembly.” Smith was one of those parents.
The Daily Wire noted that Smith became the “poster child” for the National School Boards Association’s claims that parent protests of school board policies could be a form of “domestic terrorism” as a result of a viral video showing his arrest.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice directed law enforcement agencies to collaborate on “addressing threats” against school officials after the NSBA requested “federal assistance” to combat what the organization characterized as “domestic terrorism” and “hate crimes.”
In his Fox News appearance Tuesday, Smith accused the Biden of administration of using the video of his arrest at the school board meeting to “weaponize” the government against concerned parents.
Smith also elaborated on the events that led to his arrest. As one of several parents hoping to address the Loudoun County School Board on June 22, Smith and his wife were confronted by a left-wing activist who berated them upon learning that they were there to speak out against the transgender policy. When Smith tried to tell the woman what happened to his daughter, she asserted, “that’s not what happened.” After she vowed to hurt his business by posting unfavorable reviews on social media, Smith called her a “b****.”
From there, law enforcement officials descended on Smith, wrestling him to the ground and causing his lip to bleed. Smith’s wife shouted out, “My child was raped at school, and this is what happens!”
The Daily Wire concluded that the passage of the policy would have been “politically impossible had Smith’s story seen the light of day.” Lancaster agreed, suggesting that “If someone would have sat and listened for 30 seconds to what Scott had to say, they would have been mortified and heartbroken.”
While the school district had knowledge of what happened to Smith’s daughter, it assured the public that such incidents had not taken place in Loudoun County.
At the June 22 meeting, Ziegler dismissed the idea of predators taking advantage of policies like Policy 8040 as a “red herring.” He cited a Time Magazine article and asserted that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
Smith told Fox News that in the weeks following his daughter’s assault and his arrest, he wanted to keep a low profile because “we were under the impression from the prosecutor that this sexual predator was being held on in-house arrest with an ankle monitor and would not return to school until these court sessions were done.”
“I was told by everyone … my attorneys, the prosecuting attorney, friends of the family, people that I don’t even know that if I wanted justice for my daughter, that I needed to keep my mouth quiet and not speak out,” he said. “Because in order to get justice for my daughter, which is the most important thing to me of course, was do not come out and let justice prevail.”
Elaborating on the harm that the incident at Stone Bridge High School caused his family, Smith told Ingraham that as “the school board and the school system just went on summer break and abandoned us, my wife and I had to spend the entire summer … rebuilding our daughter.” He indicated that while his daughter had a “couple … rough nights” and the family endured “Hell,” she is “doing very well.”
“She’s a survivor,” he said. “She’s a winner.”
Smith’s daughter is not the first to have been sexually assaulted in a girls’ bathroom.
Pascha Thomas alleged that in 2017, her 5-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted in a girls’ bathroom at an elementary school in Decatur, Georgia.
“One of her classmates came into her bathroom, a little boy,” Thomas recalled. “She tried to leave the bathroom, [but] the little boy pushed her against the bathroom stall. Basically pinned her up against there. She asked him to stop. He wouldn’t. He took his fingers and he was penetrating her through his pants. She asked him to stop, and stated several times that it hurt. He refused.”
Thomas worked with the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom to file a lawsuit against the school district, contending that its bathroom policy enabled the assault on the then-5-year-old girl to take place.
A poll from Rasmussen Reports released on Wednesday finds that Americans are split in their opinions of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s order for law enforcement to address threats against school boards.
While 44% of likely voters believe that the investigation into alleged threats against school officials is warranted, 47% disagree. Support for investigating threats against school officials stands at 64% among Democrats and 31% among Republicans.
At the same time, 68% of respondents agreed with a statement from Republicans in the U.S. Senate asserting that “the reported heated encounters between concerned parents and school boards often involve speech that is clearly protected by the First Amendment.”
Seventy-eight percent of Republicans agreed with that statement, along with 57% of Democrats and 72% of unaffiliated voters.
Brenton Netz (L), the concerned father of a child with gender dysphoria, details how his son was convinced that he was a “transgender lesbian” at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Leesburg, Virginia, Oct. 8, 2021. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge looks on. | Family Research Council
Leesburg, VIRGINIA — A concerned father of a child whose mother is trying to convince her autistic son that he’s a girl is warning about the dangers of “radical gender ideology,” proclaiming that “we must do everything we can to save them from the jaws of this beast.”
On the final day of the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit, a panel of elected officials, journalists and activists addressed a crowd of social conservatives gathered at Cornerstone Chapel. They discussed the extent to which gender ideology has permeated American society. Moderated by Joseph Backholm, the senior fellow for biblical worldview at the Family Research Council, panelists included parent activist Brenton Netz from Michigan, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and The Christian Post journalist Brandon Showalter.
After Backholm mentioned the astronomical rise in the number of cases of gender dysphoria in children, Netz elaborated on his “legal battle to prevent his son from being given experimental gender transition” drugs, such as puberty blockers, against his will. Netz recalled the shock he felt upon reading notes from his then-8-year-old son’s therapy session with a gender clinician in St. Cloud, Minnesota, who asserted that “Miles reports her sexual orientation as lesbian”and “she reports her gender as transgender female.”
Netz described his son as a “vulnerable child” who was “diagnosed with autism at the age of 4” with “an obsessive personality” and “other real behavioral issues.” He criticized the therapist who treated his son, Troy Weber-Brown, for referring to his “autistic son as a girl named Miley using she/her and them/their pronouns.” Weber-Brown is a licensed family and marriage therapist who specializes in LGBTQ behavioral healthcare.
The father condemned the “appalling way he (Weber-Brown) counsels troubled and vulnerable children,” adding “his stated goal is to re-parent them.”
“In my case, Troy set himself up as my son’s surrogate father,” Netz said. “He meticulously manipulated my son into thinking he was not only a transgender girl and lesbian, but they were also having structured discussions about irreversible hormones and surgical options.”
“There is no way my autistic little boy voluntarily self-identified as a transgender lesbian unless he was convinced of that by an adult,” he asserted.
Netz noted that during the therapy sessions, his son’s “crotch area was examined to see how much pubic hair he had to determine if he reached the beginning stages of puberty so a referral for hormone blockers could be written.”
Netz lamented that the medical establishment and family courts have been “steadily corrupted by … postmodern gender ideology.” He concluded his opening remarks with a call to action.
“Our kids are under attack,” he said. “We must do everything we can to save them from the jaws of this beast.”
Netz identified himself as “the only adult in my son’s life who is not affirming … his delusion.”
“[T]he schools are calling him Miley. … Everybody in the medical establishment treats him as a girl, calls him Miley,” he explained.
“In our case, what has happened is there’s kind of this gridlock that happens because the medical establishment will say well, it’s a family court issue. … You can get this solved by going to the family court. Then you go to the family court, and they can’t solve it either.”
As a divorced parent, Netz has custody of his son “every other weekend plus a lot more time in the summer.”
“If anybody met my son, within the first five minutes, you would realize that … he’s incapable of coming to those conclusions.”
Backholm attempted to explain the reasons behind the increased prominence of children with gender dysphoria and the push to “affirm” children in their chosen gender identities. He cited reporting from Abigail Shrier, journalist and author of the book, Irreversible Damage. Shrier interviewed“a former Planned Parenthood employee … about the decisions … at Planned Parenthood about whether a child should receive cross-sex hormones.” The former Planned Parenthood employee told Shrier that those decisions were made by a clinic manager who had “no prior medical experience and whose former job was managing at Wendy’s.”
The former employee characterized children with gender dysphoria as “cash cows” because, in many cases, “they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc.”
While Planned Parenthood is known for performing abortions, the former employee said that “abortions are hopefully a one-and-done situation.” By contrast, children with gender dysphoria are seen as longterm potential customers, giving the organization a financial incentive.
Netz agreed that every child is vulnerable prey for agenda-driven gender clinicians.
“They will diagnose that child with gender dysphoria. … If they can do it to my son, they can do it to any child.”
Backholm held up the SAFE Act as an example of a legislative solution to combat the harm of “radical gender ideology,” including cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. SAFE is an acronym for the Saving Adolescents from Experimentation Act. He cheered Arkansas for becoming the first state to pass the “model legislation that prohibits the gender transition procedures or chemicals being given to minors.”
Rutledge informed the audience that she was “wholeheartedly defending the SAFE Act.” Netz offered praise for the SAFE Act as “a necessary measure to protect children from this mess.”
Showalter illustrated how Netz’s situation is not unique.
“I have never heard such excruciating anguish from moms and dads who somehow manage to find my journalistic work at The Christian Post.” He added that “many of them are not even Christians, they’re not conservative. I’ve received phone calls from atheists, left-wing people who say they can’t believe they’re reading CP now.”
Showalter has engaged in several conversations with parents experiencing “off-the-charts pain and anguish as they are forced to watch the slow-motion dissociation and chemical disintegration of their own children.”
He told the story of a mother who had an 18-year-old daughter with a developmental delay. The daughter went to Planned Parenthood and was given a prescription for testosterone “based on her own self-diagnosis” within 30 minutes.
“So this mom wanted to see how easy it would be for her to get testosterone” as a 50-something, he added. “She was given testosterone within 30 minutes. All they had to do was take the blood pressure, did a finger prick (blood test), and she declared herself the opposite sex, and all she had to do was sign an informed consent document that she shared with me.”
Rutledge also commented on how illogical it was to allow children to choose their gender while not allowing them to make other significant decisions such as voting and serving in the military. She also stressed that “kids are not even taken into consideration when their parents are getting a divorce as to … which parent they want to live with.”
“Why is it OK now for these medical providers and courts to push forward and allow these children to make life-altering, permanent decisions that are irreversible?” she asked.
As The Daily Wire reported, Netz is considering filing a lawsuit against the gender clinic that has convinced his young son that he is a trans-identified lesbian. Last year, Netz successfully obtained a court order to prevent his son, who’s now 11 years old, from receiving further “gender-affirming” treatment at the clinic.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., November 12, 2019. | SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Two associations representing 3,000 medical professionals and an individual doctor based in Tennessee have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s Transgender Mandate, arguing that it violates federal conscience protection laws. The American College of Pediatricians and the Catholic Medical Association, along with Dr. Jeanie Dassow of Chattanooga, filed the suit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
At issue in the court case is the HHS’ current interpretation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bars sex discrimination, to include requiring doctors to perform elective gender-transition procedures, including cosmetic surgeries such as double mastectomies, phalloplasties and orchiectomies (testicle removal).
Defendants named in the suit include the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the HHS Office for Civil Rights and Robinsue Frohboese, acting director and principal deputy in the HHS OCR.
“This case challenges whether the federal government can make medical doctors perform gender-transition surgeries, prescribe gender-transition drugs, and speak and write about patients according to gender identity, rather than biological reality—regardless of doctors’ medical judgment or conscientious objections,” noted the introduction of the lawsuit.
The suit argues that the HHS rule, known as the Transgender Mandate, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the First Amendment’s Free Speech and Free Exercise of Religion Clauses.
HHS first announced its revised interpretation of the statute in May. The so-called Transgender Surgery Mandate was first implemented by HHS under former President Barack Obama in 2016, but the Trump administration repealed the mandate in 2018.
“It is the position of the Department of Health and Human Services that everyone – including LGBTQ people – should be able to access health care, free from discrimination or interference, period,” said Becerra in the announcement.
Becerra warned that fears over discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity “can lead individuals to forgo care, which can have serious negative health consequences.”
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert, who is helping to represent the plaintiffs, said in a statement released Thursday that the HHS was “grossly overreaching its authority” by issuing the mandate.
“Forcing doctors to prescribe transition hormones for 13-year-olds or perform life-altering surgeries on adolescents is unlawful, unethical, and dangerous,” stated Bangert.
“Our clients are rightfully objecting on medical, ethical, religious, and conscientious grounds to this unlawful government mandate to provide gender-transition procedures.”
To justify their interpretation, HHS pointed to the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the high court ruled 6-3 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applied to sexual orientation and gender identity, even though neither category is specifically mentioned in the federal law: “The Supreme Court has made clear that people have a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex and receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion for the Bostock decision, concluding that “The statute’s message for our cases is equally simple and momentous: An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions.”
“That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,” he continued.
Over the years, the Transgender Mandate has been the subject of multiple lawsuits, including one filed by the Franciscan Alliance, a network of Catholic hospitals in Texas.
On Aug. 9, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, appointed to the bench by former President George W. Bush, granted a permanent injunction against the HHS mandate on behalf of the Franciscan Alliance.
O’Connor concluded that the mandate violated RFRA by unjustly harming the plaintiffs’ religious practices. He specifically contended that the mandate used threats of “fines and civil liability” to “coerce them to perform and provide insurance coverage for gender-transition procedures and abortions.”
“When the RFRA violation is clear and the threat of irreparable harm is present, a permanent injunction exempting Christian Plaintiffs from that religion-burdening conduct is the appropriate relief,” he added.
It’s bad enough that a middle school in Loudon County, Virginia, has decided to remove “male” and “female” signs from its bathrooms. But in an even more extreme nod to social insanity, this same school is removing the urinals from the boys’ bathrooms. Why? It’s because a number of biological females, who identify as males, are offended by the presence of urinals.
So rather than point out to these females that they are not really males (otherwise, they’d have no problems with urinals), the school turns the world upside down to accommodate them.
This is the direct result of school policy 8040, which states, “LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent educational record.”
So, no substantiating evidence is needed, and, the policy states, all teachers must comply with the students wishes.
In other words, impressionable students, including young children who haven’t the foggiest idea about sexual and gender realities, can simply declare their new identity, and the school must change their records accordingly. And woe be to the teacher or administrator who dares question this cultural madness.
Appropriately enough, the policy is titled, “Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students.” Gender-expansive? What does that even mean? Welcome to the new reality.
Of course, the problem with this new reality is that it has nothing to do with reality at all.
A biological boy who calls himself a girl is still a boy, and vice versa, no matter how much compassion we want to show them in the midst of their gender confusion. That’s why that girl cannot use a urinal: because she is not a boy. And saying this is neither hateful nor bigoted. It’s simply telling the truth.
But alas, we live in an age when truth has been displaced by perception, resulting in men’s bathrooms on college campuses having tampons on hand, because “men can menstruate.”And “breastfeeding” is replaced by “chestfeeding,” lest “men” breastfeeding their children feel offended.
And when you read stories stating, “When Jesse Ballard found out he was pregnant, he was shocked yet excited.” (Jesse, the “husband,” is the biological female, impregnated by his “wife,” who is the biological male.) And this is something we are supposed to celebrate. In reality, for all involved, it is heartbreaking. Surely, God has a better way.
Unfortunately, these decisions do not only affect the individuals making choices for themselves. Instead, they affect others living or working or going to school with them.
As David Kubal pointed out in his article about the urinals being removed from a school in his district, the perceived needs of roughly 0.3% of the population, now turn the world upside down for the other 99.7%.
Accordingly, he writes, because of this tiny percentage of people in Loudoun County:
46,000 junior high and high school students were given permission, by the school system, to believe they may not be a male or female as their chromosomes have determined by God’s design.
23,000 young women will be required to share a bathroom and locker room with young men.
Thousands of young women’s positions on teams are now in jeopardy by men who are now allowed to participate in female sports on female teams.
These school bathrooms may now become the scene of sexual assault and sexual immorality in ways that will mark the lives of these young men and women forever.
Teachers will have to remember a person’s desired pronouns or other “gender-expansive” terminology (I must confess, I have never heard this term, nor do I know what it means).
That’s why, in 2011 in the context of the trajectory of LGBT activism, I asked, “How far have we already deviated from the path? Where will this current trajectory take us? If our college kids can describe themselves as ‘genderqueer dykes’ and ‘transgender gay males,’ what is coming next? How about the ‘trans child’? How about ‘queer in the crib’?”
How about the bathrooms in your children’s schools removing male or female identification and all urinals removed lest they offend biological females who identify as males?
The reality is that, based on where things have been going for several decades now, none of this should surprise us. The big question should be: if we don’t stand together and help turn the tide, what’s coming next?
I’m all for helping kids who are deeply confused about their gender identity and suffering real internal pain. I’m also sure that the current LGBT trajectories will do far more harm than good. Can we not all see where this is going now?
Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 40 books. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.
A state court has ordered the Christian-owned craft store chain Hobby Lobby to pay over $200,000 in fines for refusing to allow one of its trans-identified employees to use the women’s bathroom. A three-judge Illinois appellate court panel unanimously ruled Friday that Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act by declining to allow one of its employees to use the bathroom that corresponds with the person’s gender identity instead of biological sex.
Friday’s ruling reinforces an earlier conclusion of the Illinois Human Rights Commission. The company was ordered to pay its longtime employee $220,000 in attorneys’ fees for “emotional distress.” The company argued the fine was excessive. However, the court did not find Hobby Lobby’s arguments persuasive.
The retail chain, owned by the Green family, has become known for its adherence to Christian principles. As explained in the decision, the employee, a biological male who now identifies as Meggan Sommerville, began working for Hobby Lobby in 1998. In 2007, while working as an employee of the Hobby Lobby in East Aurora, Sommerville began to transition from male to female.
The transition became official in 2010 when Sommerville “formally informed Hobby Lobby of her transition and her intent to begin using the women’s bathroom at the store.” Sommerville presented the store with an updated driver’s license, Social Security card and name change court order. Although Hobby Lobby changed Sommerville’s personnel records and benefits information to reflect a “female identity,” the store never allowed the employee to use the women’s restroom over the past decade. Sommerville has faced disciplinary action for using the women’s bathroom.
The East Aurora store did install a unisex restroom in 2013, enabling store employees and customers to “use either the bathroom corresponding to their [biological sex] or the unisex bathroom.” Sommerville contended, however, that being forced to use the unisex bathroom made it seem as if “they were segregating me,”adding, “I felt as though there were the guys, the gals, and then me.”
“Hobby Lobby’s provision of a unisex bathroom available to all employees and customers cannot cure its unequal treatment of Sommerville with respect to the women’s bathroom,”the court maintained. “If every employee and customer except Sommerville may use either the unisex bathroom or the bathroom corresponding to their sex, but Sommerville’s choices are limited to the unisex bathroom or a bathroom that does not correspond to her sex, Hobby Lobby is still discriminating unlawfully.”
Sommerville alleged that the inability to use the women’s restroom led to severe mental anguish, and the court agreed. It ruled that Hobby Lobby’s actions violated a law barring “discrimination against any individual because of his or her … [sex], or sexual orientation … in connection with employment … and the ability of public accommodations.”
Additionally, the law makes it illegal for “any employer to … segregate, or act with respect to … discipline … or terms, privileges or conditions of employment on the basis of unlawful discrimination” and for places of public accommodation to “deny or refuse to another the full and equal enjoyment of the facilities.”
The court emphasized that “discrimination against a person because of his or her actual perceived … sex … [or] sexual orientation” constitutes “unlawful discrimination.”
“Hobby Lobby’s conduct thus falls squarely within the definition of unlawful discrimination under the Act, as it treats Sommerville differently from all other women who work or shop at its store, solely on the basis that her gender identity is not ‘traditionally associated with’ her ‘designated sex at birth,’” the court argued. “The Commission did not err in finding that Hobby Lobby’s conduct of denying Sommerville access to its women’s bathroom violated her civil rights under articles 2 and 5 of the Act.”
While the court’s opinion never discussed Hobby Lobby’s Christian faith or religious beliefs, it did mention that the arts-and-crafts chain sees “an individual’s ‘sex’ — the status of being male or female” as “an immutable condition.”
Hobby Lobby gained national recognition for citing its religious beliefs when objecting to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The mandate forced employers to cover their employees’ birth control in employer-sponsored healthcare packages.
Hobby Lobby asserted that providing its employees with contraception coverage, including abortion-inducing drugs, would violate the company’s sincerely held religious beliefs.
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell that companies could refuse to provide contraception for their employees if doing so violated their religious beliefs.
The Illinois appellate court’s ruling against Hobby Lobby comes as congressional Democrats are pushing for the passage of the Equality Act, which would enshrine nondiscrimination protections for the LGBT community into federal law. The language of the Equality Act is similar to that of the Illinois Human Rights Act. Many conservatives have expressed concern about its implications for religious liberty.
A sign outside a classroom taken in 2016. | REUTERS/Tami Chappell
A Virginia school district has passed a new policy that, among other things, allows trans-identified students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity and requires teachers to refer to students by their preferred names and pronouns. The Loudoun County School Board voted 7-2 on Wednesday to approve Policy 8040: Rights of Transgender and Gender-Expansive Students despite considerable opposition to the proposal.
Among its provisions, Policy 8040 requires that school faculty and staff use the chosen name and pronouns of a student who identifies as “gender-expansive or transgender.”
“School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their consistently asserted gender identity,” reads the policy.
“The use of gender-neutral pronouns is appropriate. Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur; however, staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy.”
The policy also allows students to use the restroom or locker room “that corresponds to their consistently asserted gender identity,” noting that school administrators should consider adding “gender-inclusive or single-user restrooms” for additional privacy.
The school board also provided a frequently-asked-questions document on the new guidelines and their implementation. The page notes that while there will still be facilities explicitly marked for males and females, LCPS plans “to improve student privacy and to promote the creation of single-user restrooms that are available to all students in a ratio appropriate for the enrollment and size of the school.”
According to the FAQ document, LCPS recommended that school staff “make efforts to eliminate gender-based practices to the extent possible,” claiming that such practices “can have the effect of marginalizing, stigmatizing, and excluding students, regardless of their gender identity or gender expression.”
“Examples of practices that may be based on gender, and which should be eliminated, include grouping students for class activities, gender-based homecoming or prom courts, limitations on who can attend as ‘couples’ at school dances, and gender-based events such as father-daughter dances,” continued the FAQ document.
Critics of the controversial policy include Loudoun County School Board member Jeffrey Morse.
“The policy is not needed. The policy does not solve the issues that it’s purported to solve. The policy has forced our focus out of education and I will not support it,” stated Morse, as reported by Fox 5.
The policy garnered national attention when Bryon Tanner Cross, a teacher at Leesburg Elementary School, was suspended by LCPS for speaking out against the proposed policy at a school board meeting in May. During the public comments section of the meeting, Cross told the board that as a Christian, he was unable to “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa.”
“My name is Tanner Cross, and I am speaking out of love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria,”stated Cross at the meeting.“I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences.”
Cross sued the school district in response to the suspension, with a judge granting the Christian teacher a temporary injunction for his reinstatement in June. LCPS is appealing the decision.
An altercation between an Aberdeen, Washington, business owner and a transgender council member made headlines after the two engaged in a screaming match over a sign in the business owner’s shop that reads “If you are born with a d**k, you are not a chick.”
According to a Thursday report from KING-TV, Council member Tiesa Meskis, who identifies as a transgender woman, confronted Sucher & Sons Star Wars Shop owner Don Sucher over what Meskis said was a transphobic and bigoted a sign hanging in Sucher’s store. The exchange between the two was captured on video and soon went viral.
In the video, Sucher said, “Let me tell you this. You are f***ed in the head. You are f***ed in the head. You are an embarrassment to the community.”
“I think you need to look in the mirror when you say that,” Meskis fired back.about:blank
Sucher stepped back and gestures toward Meskis, saying, “Well look at yourself, for Christ’s sake. … You are not a f***ing chick! Do you still have a d**k? ‘Cause if you do, guess what—”
Meskis responded, “You know what, that is none of your f***ing business.”
“Do you think that there’s one person who really thinks that you’re a chick?” Sucher continued. “Nobody confronts you, that’s the problem. Why are you doing this?”
“This is who I am,” Meskis seethed.
Sucher waved off the response and said, “F*** that s**t. F*** that s**t!”
“It doesn’t mean that you can put up a sign like that,” Meskis continued.
Sucher said that Meskis makes him uncomfortable and told the trans woman to leave the store.
As Meskis exited, Sucher followed and said, “You’re f***ing nuts.”
“Trans women are women!” Meskis shouted back in defiance and began chanting the phrase from the sidewalk outside of Sucher’s store. The two continued shouting at each other for several more minutes before Meskis walked away shouting, “Stop staring at my ass!”
Content warning: Rough language:
Meskis told KING, “What he wrote [in the sign] was so demeaning and so dismissive of who I am, who any trans woman is.”
“I don’t care what they do, but don’t come in here and complain to me about stuff,” Sucher told the station. “I have free speech.”
Both say that they have received messages of support from around the country.
“Everybody’s loved it,” Sucher said about the sign. “Everybody’s taken pictures of it. … I don’t give a [expletive] about feelings anymore. I went to Vietnam to fight for all this [expletive]. Do you think I care about something [expletive] feeling? Absolutely not!”
Meskis said that her supporters plan to demonstrate at 10 a.m. Saturday outside of Sucher’s store. Apparent supporters of Sucher took to Google to leave glowing reviews for the elderly business owner. One reviewer wrote, “Thank you for taking a stand against this misogynistic war. You are speaking reality and for the majority!”
Another added, “Great experience and an excellent owner — and Vietnam Veteran — who stands up for what he believes in (which is medically-accurate reality). If you like keeping your sci-fi as entertainment, rather than letting the delusions of the mentally unhinged bleed into the real world, support Normals.”
“Here from NY just to show support for great Americans such as yourself. Thank you for being you, Sir!” another reviewer added.
At the time of this reporting, Sucher’s store has received more than 1,700 reviews tallying up to a 4.8 out of 5 rating.
James Younger with his father, Jeffrey Younger. | Screenshot: YouTube
A court in Texas has ruled that a boy at the center of a custody battle will temporarily live with his mother, who wants to have him undergo a gender transition to look more like a girl, while the father, who opposes it, will only be allowed limited visitation.
For the past couple of years, Jeff Younger and his ex-wife, Anne Georgulas — a pediatricianin Coppell, Texas, and non-biological mother of James and his twin brother, Jude — have fought over who has custody over their son, James, whom Georgulas calls “Luna” and wants to see transitioned into a girl.
In a memorandum ruling issued Tuesday, Judge Mary Brown ruled against Younger, citing his purported “unwillingness or inability to follow the order designed to serve the best interests of the children.” The court gave Georgulas various “exclusive rights on a temporary basis,” including the right to establish the children’s primary residence, the right to consent to various medical decisions, the right to determine their education, and a host of other privileges. Brown did, however, stop short of giving Georgulas the exclusive right to have James undergo experimental trans procedures such as prescribing puberty blockers or hormonal suppression “without the consent of the parents or court order.”
In addition, the court required that “Younger’s possession periods shall be continuously supervised by Forensic Counseling Services … at Mr. Younger’s sole cost and expense.”
The Facebook page “Save James” denounced the court order, saying in a statement Wednesday that it “ruled against the safety and protection of James and Jude.”
In October 2019, a Dallas jury ruled 11-1 to not give Younger sole conservatorship of his twin sons, opening to the possibility that James might undergo gender transition at the insistence of Georgulas. Georgulas filed a court petition requiring Younger to accept James as “Luna,” with her claiming that James himself has affirmed a preference to identify as female.
“When James is with me, he shows no signs of wanting to be a girl when given the choice. Even when in female company, away from me, James rejects a female gender expression,” stated Younger in an entry on the “Save James” website.
During court proceedings, Younger has argued that his son prefers to identify as a boy and reportedly threw out a bunch of dresses that his mother had bought him.
The highly publicized custody battle prompted some Texas state lawmakers to sponsor a bill that would ban the medicalized gender-transitioning of children; however, the measure died when it failed to be scheduled for a vote in the House of Representatives.
Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand competes during the Weightlifting – Women’s 87kg+ Group A on day 10 of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo International Forum on August 02, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. | Getty Images/Chris Graythen
A biological male who identifies as female was eliminated from women’s weightlifting at the Tokyo Olympics after failing three attempts in the women’s 87+ kilogram competition but still made history as the first trans-identified individual to compete in the Olympic Games.
Laurel Hubbard, a 43-year-old transgender weightlifter from New Zealand, failed three attempts in the snatch category and was knocked out of the competition as a result, reported Yahoo Sports on Monday.
“Thank you so very much for your interest in my humble sporting performance tonight,” Hubbard told reporters. “I know from a sporting perspective I did not live up to the standards I put upon myself.”
“[The International Olympic Committee has] been extraordinarily supportive and I think that they have reaffirmed the principles of the Olympics that sport is something that all people around the world can do, that it is inclusive and successful.”
Hubbard, who has competed against biologically female athletes for years, made headlines in June for reportedly being the first trans-identified athlete to qualify for the Olympics. Hubbard transitioned to a female at the age of 35. New Zealand Olympic Committee CEO Kereyn Smith said in a statement at the time that Hubbard had met the qualifications to join the South Pacific nation’s weightlifting team.
“We acknowledge that gender identity in sport is a highly sensitive and complex issue requiring a balance between human rights and fairness on the field of play,” stated Smith.
“We are committed to supporting all eligible New Zealand athletes and ensuring their mental and physical wellbeing, along with their high-performance needs, while preparing for and competing at the Olympic Games are met.”
At the 2019 Pacific Games, Hubbard won gold by defeating two women from Samoa by lifting 268 kilograms, 7 kilograms more than the silver medal winner.
Beth Stelzer, a weightlifter and founder of Save Women’s Sports, an activist group opposed to allowing biologically male athletes to compete in female athletic competitions, denounced the decision to allow Hubbard to compete against women at the Olympics as “shameful” and “a mockery of the sport.”
“Identities do not play sports; bodies play sports. The rights of females should not end where the feelings of a few males begin.”
News of Hubbard’s elimination comes as the IOC is considering revisions to its policy regarding the participation of transgender athletes, especially biological males participating in women’s competitions. Hubbard qualified under the IOC’s 2015 guidelines, which allowed the lifter to compete without a sex change surgery as long as drugs are taken to lower testosterone to below 10 nanomoles per liter for 12 months.
IOC’s medical and science director Dr. Richard Budgett recently said that 2015 guidelines were no longer backed by science, according to The Guardian.
“At the time the 10 nanomoles per liter was set because we thought that was the lower level for men,” Budgett was quoted as saying. “We know now that they go down to seven and women can be higher as well. Agreeing on another number is almost impossible and possibly irrelevant. You can debate that endlessly.”
Budgett said that the IOC wants to “increase inclusion in sport as one of the fundamentals, but at the same time our highest, highest priority is fairness.”
Katie Mascagni, the IOC’s head of public affairs, told Yahoo Sports that in some sports, “testosterone or other aspects come into play in order to justify the reasons there is a disproportionate advantage.” But in other contexts, she said those factors might “be totally irrelevant.”
On social media, LGBT activist and bestselling author Amanda Jetté Knox used Hubbard’s Olympic result to bash arguments from those who oppose trans-identified individuals competing in women’s sports. She stated that Hubbard “was eliminated from competition after not performing as well as the cis athletes who will be competing in the Olympic finals.”
“B-b-but how is she going to grab all the gold medals with her ‘unfair advantage’?!” Knox wrote on Twitter.
The activist group Fair Play for Women stressed, however, that Hubbard’s ability to qualify for the Olympics resulted in a biological female not having the opportunity to participate in the Tokyo Games.
“This is Roviel Detenamo. She should be at Tokyo 2020 today but she’ll be watching the games from home because the IOC rules allowed a male person to compete in her female category,” the organization tweeted Monday.
If there’s one good thing that came out of school closures, it’s that parents finally had a window into what their kids were being exposed to in the classroom — and many were horrified by what they saw.
That’s exactly what happened in Carmel, Indiana, where parents learned the full scope of the perversion being peddled to their children. The school libraries there are filled with storybooks pushing radical transgender ideology, lessons on masturbation for middle schoolers, and novels with explicit sexual scenes including one describing a bloody rape.
At a meeting of the Carmel Clay School Board on Monday, outraged parents took turns reading excerpts from these materials. They are so objectionable that it’s necessary to issue more than our usual warning of graphic content. Watch at your own risk — but keep in mind, this smut is being made available to schoolchildren.
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
One parent spoke out against the “global campaign to promote sexualized material to grade school children which is heralded by the UN, championed by Planned Parenthood and is now making its way into the Carmel schools.”
She noted some of the titles available at elementary schools, including “Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story About Gender and Friendship,” which uses a teddy bear to teach kids that gender isn’t determined by biology. There is also “Sparkle Boy,” about a toddler’s cross-dressing tendencies, and “Call Me Max,” in which a kindergarten girl gets a teacher to call her by a boy’s name.
(Whatever happened to reading Dr. Seuss books to schoolchildren? Oh, right — canceled by the woke mob.)
Another parent read from a novel available to Carmel high schoolers that includes a pornographic scene explicitly describing characters engaged in various sex acts. It’s too obscene to even summarize.
A third parent read from the book “It’s Perfectly Normal,” which is available to middle school children and promoted by Planned Parenthood. It teaches kids how to masturbate and is filled with nitty-gritty details.
A book called “Crank” details a disturbing rape that transpires when a young couple goes into the woods to get drunk and high on meth.
“If I had known you were just going to lay there, I wouldn’t have bothered,” the rapist tells his victim on the car ride home.
The video of Monday’s school board meeting was uploaded to YouTube by the group Unify Carmel, which is raising the alarm on the wokeism pervading the city’s public schools.
Alvin Lui, a parent activist, told WIBC in May that he fled California to escape radical leftist ideology — only to find it in his new home in Indiana.
“If I [raised] my daughter in California, the schools and the culture there would teach her that her two most important things in life [are] that she’s Asian and she’s female,” he said.
Lui said he began to worry about his daughter’s new school when he saw ideas like critical race theory make their way into the curriculum, a change that no doubt came about when the district hired its first “diversity, equity and inclusion officer” in January.
“We saw a lot of little things before other people saw it because we’ve lived through it previously,” Lui said. “So for my wife and I, it kind of feels like we’re living through that same nightmare all over again except in the very beginning.”
Parents have already begun pushing back against other items on the woke agenda, but Monday’s meeting in Carmel revealed the sexual indecency introduced to children in public schools.
“If I were to read it to you, you wouldn’t be able to air it because it would be against FCC obscenity laws,” Lui told WXIN-TV. “Everyone was uncomfortable, and these are adults.”
To his credit, Carmel Clay Superintendent Dr. Michael Beresford said he wasn’t aware of the books until the meeting and pledged to look into them. Carmel certainly isn’t the only place where so-called educators are sexualizing children — leftists are hard at work across the country. They know that sexually active kids make great abortion clients for Planned Parenthood and turn into Democratic voters when they become impoverished single parents.
Transgender advocates know that if they can get a hold of kindergarten minds, they can recruit a generation of confused children. The doctors who prescribe the puberty blockers and perform the “transition” surgeries can get that much richer.
Beyond the political sphere, what we have here is a battle for the hearts and souls of American children. This perversion tailored to kids stems from a diabolical determination to spoil their innocence and set them up for a life of servitude to sin. Whether they know it or not, the teachers giving smut to their students are cooperating with the dark powers that would turn us away from God by shackling us to our basest desires. There’s no surer way to do that than to expose children to this filth early and often.
Americans now have the opportunity to see and hear exactly what’s going on in public schools — and it’s our job to do exactly what these parents did on Monday.
Christine earned her bachelor’s degree from Seton Hall University, where she studied communications and Latin. She left her career in the insurance industry to become a freelance writer and stay-at-home mother.@CFavocciFacebook
Arkansas flag flying high beside the Arkansas state Capitol, front exterior, in Little Rock, Arkansas. | Getty Images
A federal judge has temporarily blocked an Arkansas law banning the use of experimental drugs and gender-transition surgeries on minors, which was set to take effect next week in the state. The law, called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, was adopted earlier this year in the southern state after lawmakers overrode Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of the bill. Hutchinson, a Republican, said in April that the measure was “extreme” and “overbroad” and that it could not be defended on limited government grounds. The law was scheduled to be enacted on July 28.
Led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, he and Republican attorneys general of 17 states — Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas — filed an amicus brief in federal court last Tuesday in support of the Arkansas law.
Wednesday’s judicial injunction against the law comes as four trans-identifying young people, two doctors, and the American Civil Liberties Union came together to file a lawsuit against the state, arguing that the statute violates their constitutional rights. The judge said that their motions could indeed be successful at trial.
“CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS”?????????? What constitutional rights? Where did the Founding Father’s write down that it is the right of adults to have children be mutilated by agenda other driven adults?
“To pull this care midstream from these patients, or minors, would cause irreparable harm,” U.S. District Judge Jay Moody, who issued the ruling, said in a statement.
Praising the decision, Holly Dickson, the executive director of the Arkansas chapter of the ACLU, said the ruling sends a message to other states that her organization will not allow the medicalized gender transitioning of children to be taken away from youth.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, a Republican, intends to appeal the ruling, promising to defend the law.
“I will not sit idly by while radical groups such as the ACLU use our children as pawns for their own social agenda,” she said.
Likewise, family advocates in favor of the law said they believe the truth about the nature of these contested medical practices and procedures will eventually win out.
“We are disappointed but not surprised that a judge has placed a temporary hold on the Arkansas law that protects children from unscientific, experimental, and destructive gender transition procedures. However, we are confident that ultimately state lawmakers will remain free to protect the health and safety of children,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council, in a statement emailed to The Christian Post.
“The legal challenge to this law is being mounted by a political movement that advocates for using off-label drugs and experimental procedures on minors. Yet a growing number of individuals are coming forward to share their stories of being permanently disfigured and/or sterilized from procedures such as puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries. The truth about the dangers of these life-altering procedures cannot be ignored,” he said.
The intensifying legal disputes in the United States regarding the medicalization of gender, especially as it pertains to minors, comes as European nations are moving away from the experimental practices.
Late last year, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom ruled in a judicial review that children younger than 16 are unlikely to be mature enough to consent to taking irreversible chemical puberty-blocking drugs given the significant risks and repercussions to their health. The ruling is presently being appealed, and a subsequent decision in March held that parents could give consent on behalf of their minor children.
Earlier this year in Sweden, the prominent Karolinska Hospital said that as of April 1, puberty blockers would no longer be given to youth younger than 16, and their statement referenced the U.K. ruling as part of their rationale.
In June of last year, health authorities in Finland revised their professional guidelines by prioritizing psychological help and support over experimental medicine, especially for young people whose gender dysphoria came about after puberty.
Demonstrators protest for transgender rights with a rally, march through the Loop and a candlelight vigil to remember transgender friends lost to murder and suicide on March 3, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. | Getty Images/Scott Olson
More than a dozen state attorneys general have come to the defense of an Arkansas law banning the use of puberty blockers on children with gender dysphoria amid a legal challenge, arguing that states have an obligation to “protect kids.”
Led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, the Republican attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas filed an amicus brief in federal court last Tuesday. They asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas to reject the ACLU’s motion to block Arkansas’ Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act. The law, the first of its kind to be passed in the nation, prohibits physicians from providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and elective cosmetic gender surgeries to children under 18.
Additionally, the measure prohibits state tax dollars from funding such practices and allows insurance companies to deny coverage for sex reassignment surgeries. The legislation was passed by the Republican-led state legislature in March. But Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed the measure when it reached his desk. The legislature overrode the veto, enabling the SAFE Act to become law.
Shortly after, the progressive legal nonprofit ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of four Arkansas families seeking to invalidate the law. The complaint argues that the law “denies adolescents medically necessary treatment and prevents parents from obtaining medically necessary care for their children.” Although the ALCU claims that the law prohibits “doctors from treating their patients in accordance with the well-established standards of care,” the attorney’s general’s friend-of-the-court brief argues that the lawsuit is “misleading” and ignores “risks such experimental treatments pose.”
“They ignore the fact that children cannot fully understand the long-term risks associated with the procedures,” the brief argues.
“They threaten that Arkansas’s law will result in increased suicides even though the research does not support such a claim. And they assert that the State’s protection of its children is ‘animus’ against transgender youth, even though, among other problems with the statement, most of these children will not identify as transgender as adults since their dysphoria will have resolved naturally so long as they can be protected from Plaintiffs’ preferred experiments.”
The brief was filed over a month after the ACLU first asked the court to rule in favor of Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and the other defendants seeking to uphold the SAFE Act. The attorneys general argue that states have been forced to step in to protect children because children with gender dysphoria are being given “puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones, then surgical interventions such as ‘chest reconstruction surgery’ … to ‘masculinize’ … a girl’s chest …”
The plaintiffs argue that not taking such measures “can result in debilitating anxiety and depression, self-harm, and suicide,” the brief explains.
“States have been forced to step in to protect kids from experimental treatments,” the brief argues. “Because “the medical establishment has abandoned the field to the political zeitgeist, which labels dissenting opinions as ‘animus’ (or worse) and closes its ears to the tragic and growing chorus of detransitioners who feel betrayed by the adults who should have been caring for them.”
The “peculiar vulnerability of children,” specifically their “inability to make critical decisions in an informed, mature manner,” is listed as a justification for state action.
The attorneys general warned that cross-sex hormones and other medical interventions to address gender dysphoria could lead to “irreversible, lifelong consequences.” They include “complications such as infertility, loss of sexual function, increased risk of heart attacks and strokes, bone-density problems, risk of altered brain development, social risks from delayed puberty, and mental health concerns.”
The document cited the decision by the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden “to change course and prohibit the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors except in clinical trial settings.”
A statement from the hospital contends that “these treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis.”
The attorneys general maintained that “the evidence that does exist shows that most cases of gender dysphoria resolve naturally by adulthood.”
“At the end of the day, it was the responsibility of the Arkansas legislature to determine the best way to protect children suffering from gender dysphoria and other forms of gender-related psychological distress. The medical uncertainty in the field does not relieve that responsibility, but only heightens it,” the brief reads.
“Based on the evidence, the legislature determined that the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions are still experimental in nature and that the risks of such procedures outweigh their benefits. That determination does not discriminate against children suffering from gender dysphoria, but seeks to protect them.”
The Biden administration believes that Arkansas law is unconstitutional.
In a court filing in support of the ACLU’s lawsuit, the U.S. Department of Justice asserted that “federal law bars the State of Arkansas from singling out transgender minors for specifically and discriminatorily denying their access to medically necessary care based solely on their sex assigned at birth.”
Such action, the Justice Department argues, would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The consequences of allowing minors to undergo medicalized gender transitioning have received heightened attention in recent weeks. The CBS news magazine program “60 Minutes” profiled detransitioners who underwent some form of gender transitioning as minors only to regret their decision later in life. A mainstream media outlet giving a platform to detransitioners outraged transgender activists, who accused the program of doing “harm” to the transgender community by reporting on the transgender debate from that particular angle.
Journalist Lesley Stahl defended the production.
“Their point is that they were not getting proper healthcare,” Stahl said in a follow-up segment. “That was their point and that’s the point we wanted to emphasize: that these were young people that were not getting proper healthcare advice.”
LGBT activists also slammed the American Bookseller Association for promoting the book Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, which highlights the rapid acceleration in the number of girls seeking to undergo gender transition surgery in addition to the long-term consequences associated with such procedures.
In response to the outcry, the ABA apologized for promoting a book that “goes against ABA’s ends policies, values and everything we believe and support,” describing their previous action as “inexcusable.”
As the battle rages on in our society about gender identity and the treatment of same-sex relationships under the law, the church is not immune from addressing these issues head-on – even at the dinner table. If you are like me, these questions are a constant source of debate with teenage children who are bombarded with social media and classroom discussions on the topic that challenge our Biblical views on sexuality, marriage, and gender.
Alarming statistics from a recent Gallup poll show that the onslaught of LGBTQ messaging directed at our youth is working. The report states, “younger generations are far more likely to consider themselves to be something other than heterosexual. This includes about one in six adult members of Generation Z (those aged 18 to 23 in 2020)…and more than half of those claim they are bisexual.” The fact that the rise is most pronounced in young people and the majority is not experiencing same-sex attraction, indicates that the deliberate indoctrination of our children not to accept traditional gender roles is increasingly successful.
When it comes to gender identity, the drastic rise in young people that identify as “gender fluid” has generated fierce debate. Prominent academics and health professionals advocate for a gender affirmative model, claiming that gender is determined by an “interweaving of biology, development and socialization; and, culture and context, with all three bearing on an individual’s gender self.” Therefore, parents should accept the “gender” as stated by the child, regardless of their anatomy. Juxtapose that to the stance of child advocates, researchers, and Christians who firmly believe the rapid onset of gender confusion in our youth results from underlying emotional disorders and manipulation from schools and other institutions that are engaged in some form of conversion therapy on our children. If you are not familiar with this debate, I encourage you to read these resources and understand the extent of the battle for our youth’s identity and emotional well-being.
Surprisingly, the church as a whole is not of one opinion on the issue of sexual preference and God’s condemnation of same-sex relations. The acceptance of openly gay members and clergy are on the rise. Some denominations that ordain homosexual pastors and worship leaders defend their stance by claiming Jesus loves everyone, and research shows that a significant number of Christians find no conflict between their religious beliefs and homosexuality. Thankfully, many evangelical Pastors do not legitimize same-sex couples and instead encourage the individual to rebuke the sin and lean on the power of the Holy Spirit to fight the urges of same-sex attraction just as one would other sins like fornication or adultery.In His Image, the movie does a beautiful job describing just how a Bible-honoring Christian can convey the message of the love of Christ to someone struggling with same-sex attraction. Organizations like Changed Movement help people find community with others struggling with similar issues but who left the LGBTQ lifestyle for freedom in Christ.
Even as a new believer, I knew the Lord did not intend to condone same-sex relationships based on Scripture (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10) , but I struggled with how I could convey these principles to my daughter in a spirit of love and compassion. Last month, I was fortunate to attend an event for Living Stone Ministries at my church to hear from other parents of children struggling with gender identity and same-sex attraction. It was a wonderful time of support and worship with other parents, but the most amazing part of the evening was listening to former gay believers talk about their journey and the impact their parents had on their road to freedom in Christ.
Two of these young men and women empathically said their parent’s unwavering commitment to the Gospel stuck with them the most when deciding to leave the homosexual lifestyle. As one young man put it, “no matter how I tried to manipulate my mom or convince her that she was wrong and just didn’t want to support me, she never wavered on the truth that Jesus wanted a better life for me and I would never find true happiness in a same-sex relationship.” It was the truth of his mother’s words that rung in his ears when he survived an attempted suicide and finally gave his life to Christ for healing and restoration. Another young woman said her Christian mother took the opposite approach and went to gay bars with her to make her feel accepted. It ultimately backfired and made her resent her mother for not helping her leave the lifestyle. Hearing these stories brought me so much peace because it was a truth I knew in my heart but hearing it from someone with lived it affirmed my conviction.
So despite the arguments and accusations that my stance is homophobic, outdated, or just “my truth,” I continue to tell my young daughter that Jesus loves all sinners but despises the sin. It is no different than if she came to me wanting to do drugs or engage in premarital sex. I would warn her that a life of sin will never bring happiness or the freedom that comes from a life in obedience to God.
In light of all that is coming against our children to draw them into a life of death and depression, it is unfortunate that any church would condone same-sex couples and even allow openly gay pastors to lead a congregation. How can we teach our young people to follow any of the Bible’s commandments if we compromise the one that destroys the sanctity of creation and monogamy between a man and a woman in marriage? It is just one more example of how liberalism is unraveling the fundamental principles of the Gospel. Ultimately, it is a massive disservice to people who want to break the strongholds of addiction and be restored through the love and redemption of Christ.
ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR:
Hedieh Mirahmadi was a devout Muslim for two decades working in the field of national security before she experienced the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and has a new passion for sharing the Gospel. She dedicates herself full-time to Resurrect Ministry, an online resource that harnesses the power of the Internet to make salvation through Christ available to people of all nations, and her daily podcast LivingFearlessDevotional.com
A sign outside a classroom taken in 2016. | REUTERS/Tami Chappell
Just a week after the U.S. Department of Education concluded that the protections of Title IX extend to LGBT students, the Biden administration has sent a letter to schools across the nation informing them of the policy change and providing examples of actions that now constitute as discrimination.
The “Dear Educator” letter was published Wednesday, the 49th anniversary of the implementation of Title IX, which was created to provide equal opportunities for women and girls in education. Written by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, Suzanne Goldberg, the letter informs educators about the recently issued public notice by the Department of Education, announcing that “Title IX’s protection against sex discrimination encompasses discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
The department made that determination based on the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person” because of their sexual orientation or gender identity “without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” In addition to the Bostock decision, Goldberg cited “the particular vulnerability of LGBTQI+ students and the often overwhelming challenges these students face in education compared to their peers” as a rationale for the new interpretation of Title IX.
“The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights works to ensure that Title IX’s mandate protects students in all aspects of their education, including recruitment, admissions, and counseling; financial assistance; athletics; protections from sex-based harassment, (sic) which encompasses sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence; treatment of pregnant and parenting students; discipline; equal access to classes and activities; and treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) students,” Goldberg wrote.
Goldberg vowed that the “OCR will fully enforce Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the department.” Additionally, a fact sheet about “Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Discrimination in Schools” accompanied the Dear Educator letter. The fact sheet provided examples of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity that the OCR could investigate.
Under one such example, “a transgender high school girl is stopped by the principal” on the way to use the girls’ bathroom. “The principal tells the student to use the boys’ restroom or nurse’s office because her school records identify her as ‘male.’” In other words, according to President Joe Biden’s Department of Education, refusing to allow a biological male who identifies as a girl to enter the girls’ bathroom constitutes discrimination under Title IX.
In that same scenario, the trans-identified male “joins her friends to try out for the girls’ cheerleading team and the coach turns her away from the tryouts simply because she is transgender.” Based on the Department of Education’s understanding of Title IX, it is considered discriminatory to require student athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond to their biological sex as opposed to their chosen gender identity.
In another scenario, “an elementary school student with intersex traits dresses in a gender neutral way, identifies as nonbinary, and uses they/them pronouns.” In this particular example, “the teacher tells the class that there are only boys and girls and anyone who thinks otherwise has something wrong with them.”
The characterization of this scenario, as an example of discrimination, illustrates that the Department of Education sees it as discriminatory to acknowledge the biological fact that there are two genders.
Even before the federal government implemented its new interpretation of Title IX, a teacher in Loudoun County, Virginia, was placed on leave for stating that he would not “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa.” He was ultimately reinstated to his position by a judge, and the school district is appealing that decision.
Conservative groups quickly panned the Department of Education’s Dear Educator letter, elaborating on the new interpretation of Title IX. “It’s an unhappy anniversary for Title IX,”said Meridian Baldacci, policy and communications strategist at the Family Policy Institute in response to the letter.
“Today, the Biden administration single-handedly turned Title IX on its head to say that women are discriminating against men when they have concerns about men being called ‘women,’ using their locker rooms, competing on their sports teams, or taking away their championships and scholarship opportunities. That the Department of Education is demanding this in the name of ‘protecting’ students and stopping ‘discrimination’ is stunning. This move is misguided and antithetical to the purpose of Title IX,” she added.
This is not the first time that the federal government has attempted to force schools to allow biological males who identify as females to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. Toward the end of the Obama administration, where Biden served as vice president, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued a joint letter requiring schools to allow trans-identified students to use restrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity as opposed to their biological sex.
Jolene and Natassia Grover speak on Fox News about the Loudoun County Public Schools gender identity policies.
A teenage girl whose comments before the Loudoun County School Board in Virginia went viral explained why she felt called to speak out. Jolene Grover, 14, told members of the school board last week that their policy of allowing males into girls’ private spaces, such as restrooms and locker rooms, is an affront to female students.
Sporting a green T-shirt that read “Woman is female,” the now-homeschooled student who was previously enrolled in a Louden County public school told the board members: “Everyone knows what a boy is — even you.”
“Your policies are dangerous and rooted in sexism. Boys are reading erotica in the classrooms next to girls, and you want to give them access to girls’ locker rooms, and you want to force girls to call those boys ‘she,’” she said in her remarks, as reported by the New York Post.
“You do this in the name of inclusivity while ignoring the girls who will pay the price. Your policies choose boys’ wants over girls’ needs.”
She also recounted that when she expressed concern to a guidance counselor about the policies, she was dismissed and told there are stalls in the bathroom.
Jolene said in an email to The Christian Post on Monday that though she is no longer a student in the public school system, she spoke out because she is especially concerned for her friends who are still there, particularly one who is starting sixth grade in the fall.
“I’ve known her for years, and she is like a little sister to me. I also speak out because there are too many cowardly adults who are remaining quiet about this issue. I want adults to stop calling me brave for fighting a battle that wasn’t mine to begin with,” Jolene said.
“They need to speak out publicly about this issue, not just whisper to their friends and other people who agree with them that boys shouldn’t be allowed in the girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms. Some of my friends still enrolled in LCPS have spoken to me about their concern with these policies, but they are also too afraid to speak out,” she added.
Her mother, Nastassia, who has written previously about gender identity ideology and how it threatens women’s rights, told CP in a separate email Monday that it’s important for people to boldly voice their objections.
“Outrage is important. It motivates people to speak out and to fight for what they believe in. Righteous indignation leaves no room for fear,” she said.
She added that the only solution to fix these problems is for conservative-leaning parents to remove their children from the schools. The Democratic Party is “a lost cause” on the issue, she maintained, adding that parents don’t stand a chance to win unless the Republicans make a generous school choice policy a part of their platform and act on it.
“The GOP must become the party of the common, moral working man and must do it now,” she stressed, noting that this is an issue where the conservative party will either show itself to be “the controlled opposition party that only exists to lose” or the only party that exists to fight for families and for girls’ most basic rights to privacy and dignity.
The Loudoun County mother also believes that the school system will be doubling down hard on mandatory preferred pronoun use and mixed-sex bathrooms and locker rooms, and believes state and national LGBT activist groups are driving this push.
“The puppet masters pulling the strings — such as Equality Virginia and the Human Rights Campaign — are too financially and politically powerful to ignore. They are not going to let all their hard work in Richmond go to waste because a few outspoken Christians don’t want to be complicit in lies and child abuse,” she said.
“Who Virginians elect, or have elected for them, in November and in other consequential elections will determine the final trajectory of the state. Do we continue on as Maryland-lite, or do we try to become New California, or do we turn back the madness and protect our most basic fundamental rights?”
Jolene’s words come on the heels of coach Tanner Cross, an LCPS employee, who made comments at a similar forum last month when he said he would not “affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion.”
“It’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
Because of his remarks, he was subsequently placed on administrative leave, but then he filed a lawsuit and won at the Virginia state circuit court, which ruled that he must be reinstated.
An obese man who claims to be a woman was tasked by President Joe Biden to tend to the mental and physical health of all Americans.
This is not satire.
In a video from March 26 that went viral on Twitter this week when it was shared by talk show host Chris Stigall, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, expressed a commitment to promoting physical and mental health in America.
“Throughout my career, I have focused on the intersection between medical, mental and behavioral health,” Levine said. “And as your ASH, I will continue that focus and support policy initiatives to improve Americans’ physical and mental well-being.”
Just to be clear, despite the watering down of “gender identity disorder” into “gender dysphoria” to protect people’s feelings in recent years, transgenderism certainly represents a mental health crisis in anyone desperate enough to pursue it.
Plainly, no one on earth should be taking health advice from this man.
Of course, Levine’s appointment and subsequent health advice were never actually about the health of Americans, nor even were they about Levine’s qualifications. Rather, they were about the Biden administration’s steadfast dedication to proliferating transgender ideology by any means necessary, up to and including redefining the legal definition of sex to include whatever so-called gender identity a person calls themselves at any given moment.
So what is one to do with this administration’s sham of a statement on mental health and its relentless propagation of harmful falsehoods? What is one to do with the continuous droning on of Levine who, despite everything, seems to legitimately want to help Americans while also lacking the personal fortitude to help himself?
Levine clearly needs help.
While all Americans should wish him well in that endeavor, however, the nation cannot sit around and wait for the assistant secretary of health to return to mental and physical health. As such, Americans ought to deal with this nonsense the same way they’ve had to deal with all of the administration’s other failures: Ignore it, step up and handle crises locally.
Andrew Thornebrooke is a writer specializing in foreign policy and national security. He is the executive editor of The Rearguard and a MA candidate in military history at Norwich University.@AThornebrooke
A renowned psychiatrist who was instrumental in shutting down the sex change clinic at Johns Hopkins University in 1979 argues that the contemporary “folly” of transgender medicalization will soon “collapse” similar to how the eugenics movement crumbled.
In a recent interview that covered many areas of psychiatric medicine with Public Discourse, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Distinguished Service Professor Dr. Paul McHugh explained that the bodily process of puberty is one of the most mysterious stages of human development.
Gender dysphoric youth who are given drugs in pediatric gender clinics across the country to suppress their normal puberty are incapable of consenting to such interventions, as are their parents, he said.
Unlike other animals, “[w]ith human beings, some of the most interesting individuating characteristics of themselves occur only after puberty, probably with a combination of the intellectual powers and the energy that sexual development brings,” McHugh recounted.
“I don’t think any child — and any parent, for that matter — can make an informed consent to permit the blocking of puberty and the transmission of another sex. That’s the first thing: you don’t have an idea what you’re doing. So how can you have an informed consent about it? Because nobody knows.”
McHugh co-authored a controversial 2017 report arguing that the treatment of gender-confused children with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones has not been adequately researched by the science and medical communities. He and his colleagues argued that treating kids with puberty blockers should be seen as “radical” and “experimental.” The report received much opposition from the LGBT community. Other doctors and researchers have argued that the report misrepresents the state of scientific research.
McHugh has maintained that although he is not against transgender people, he believes that they should receive psychiatric help rather than hormone therapy and reassignment surgeries. He explained in the interview that almost all children, 85% to 95%, who believe they are the opposite sex will grow out of it if allowed to go through the normal puberty process.
Yet, if a hormone blocker is introduced at age 9 or 10, only 5% to 10% of such children will refuse to go further down a medicalized pathway that may entail cross-sex hormones or body-altering surgery. He said the reason for this dramatic difference in percentages is because the pubertal processes shape the brain, and the normal signaling does not occur if thwarted by a blocker.
Transgender advocates frequently assert that puberty blockers are completely reversible, an idea McHugh says is “still very debatable.” Moreover, he continued, puberty is an incredibly complex process that is being reduced by some to appear as though it is simple. The vulnerability of scientists is that they “can be dealing with the most complex issue and try to oversimplify it and make it seem like a simple issue” despite complex brain issues, hormones and neuroendocrine relationships, he said. The psychiatrist added that he is amazed at how much money, medical institutions and political machinery the transgender movement has amassed to support its goals. But, he believes it will not succeed in the end.
“I’m absolutely convinced that this is folly and it’s going to collapse, just as the eugenics folly collapsed,” he asserted.
McHugh was the director of the psychiatry and behavioral sciences department at Johns Hopkins University and was the psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1975 to 2001. His comments come amid greater scrutiny of specific practices now occurring in some European nations. Late last year, the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom ruled in a judicial review brought in part by a young woman named Keira Bell that children under the age of 16 are unlikely to be mature enough to consent to chemical puberty blockade given the significant risks and repercussions to their health.
Bell, now 24, underwent the experimental practice as a teenager at the London-based Tavistock gender clinic. She went on to take cross-sex hormones and have her breasts surgically removed. Bell argued that she was not capable of understanding the consequences of what she was doing as a troubled youth battling depression and other social struggles. A subsequent court ruling held that parents could give consent for their under-16 children for the hormone blockers.
Earlier this year in Sweden, the prominent Karolinska University Hospital said that as of April 1, puberty blockers would no longer be given to youth younger than 16 and reference the Bell ruling in the U.K.
“These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis,” the statement read. “This makes it challenging to assess the risk/benefit for the individual patient, and even more challenging for the minors and their guardians to be in a position of an informed stance regarding these treatments.”
In June of last year, health authorities in neighboring Finland revised their professional guidelines by prioritizing psychological help and support over experimental medicine, especially for young people whose gender dysphoria came about after puberty, which is at present the most common form of gender confusion.
Although McHugh helped shut down the sex change clinic at Hopkins in 1979, the influential medical school relaunched the clinic in 2017.
Last month, an episode of “60 Minutes” aired the concerns of detransitioners, those who once identified as transgender but now regret their decisions to transition. They testified about how they felt rushed into a decision to undergo medicalized gender transition procedures.
A Christian physical education teacher has been placed on administrative leave after declaring in a speech that he would not “lie” to his students and “defile” God by affirming that “a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa,” Fox News reported.
The teacher, Byron “Tanner” Cross, made the defiant declaration at a Loudon County school board meeting on Tuesday, according to the nonprofit group, Parents Against Critical Race Theory.
During the speech, Cross voiced his opposition to new transgender-affirming policies pushed by the school district that require all staff use a student’s preferred gender pronouns and permitted transgender students to participate in activities consistent with their gender identity, rather than their biological sex.
“My name is Tanner Cross and I am speaking out of love for those who are suffering from gender dysphoria,” Cross said at the opening of his speech.
“’60 Minutes’ this past Sunday interviewed over 30 young people who transitioned, but they felt led astray because of lack of pushback or how easy it was to make physical changes to their bodies in just three months. They are now de-transitioning,” he continued.
“It’s not my intention to hurt anyone, but there are certain truths that we must face when ready. We condemn school policies like 8040 and [8350] because it will damage children [and] defile the holy image of God,” Cross added.
“I love all of my students but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I’m a teacher but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl, and vice versa, because it’s against my religion,” he explained. “It’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
In an email reportedly obtained by PACT and shown to Fox News, Leesburg Elementary Principal Shawn Lacey informed parents that Cross had been placed on administrative leave.
“I’m contacting you to let you know that one of our physical education teachers, Tanner Cross, is on leave beginning this morning,”Lacey said in the email. “In his absence, his duties will be covered by substitute staff already working in our building. I wanted you to know this because it may affect your student’s school routine. Because this involves a personnel matter, I can offer no further information.”
Loudon County Public Schools confirmed to Fox News that Lacey sent the email regarding Cross, but noted that noted that “the decision to place an employee on leave is not the principal’s.”
The spokesperson went on to say, “The contents of personnel files are confidential under state and federal law. I cannot comment other to say that Mr. Cross is on administrative leave with pay.”
According to LCPS documents, policy 8040 specifies that, “School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, when using a name or pronoun to address the student, use the name and pronoun that correspond to their gender identity. The use of gender-neutral pronouns are appropriate.”
It adds: “Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur; however, staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a student’s gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy.”
Policy 8350 states: “LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive and transgender students to 37 participate in such activities in a manner consistent with the student’s gender identity.”
Amazon, the second-largest U.S.-based corporate employer in the world. | Reuters/Charles Patiau
With no notification given, Amazon banned a new book aimed at helping parents sever the influences of gender ideology and then reversed its decision in its latest move against voices that scrutinize transgenderism.
Keffler told The Christian Post in a phone interview on Wednesday that she wasn’t surprised Amazon blocked her book, though she had hoped it would last longer than six days.
“We fully expected it to happen. We knew it was going to. We decided to launch it on multiple platforms because we expected it to be canceled. And so that’s why we also put it on Smashwords as well as Lulu, a print platform,” Keffler said.
Shortly after CP’s interview with Keffler Wednesday, the author said that the online retailer sent her an email, which she shared with CP, explaining that the scrubbing of the book was an “error.” The Kindle version went live and the paperback version should be reactivated soon. Amazon had previously told her that the book had violated their terms of service, which she challenged. In a subsequent email to CP, Keffler said it was possible that “a calling and emailing onslaught may have affected the outcome” as “lots and lots of people were contacting Amazon to complain.”
Keffler believes that Big Tech and large corporations are intent on silencing critical voices of transgender ideology because there is big money in the “gender industry,” referencing The 11th Hour Blog, a website where the revenue streams fueling transgender ideology worldwide have been traced and documented.
Fifteen years ago, the trend in young adult literature was vampire and werewolves, she explained, noting that she was glad to see that trend come to an end. Yet today, the dominant genre is transgender literature.
“There are hundreds of these trans books out there and there’s a lot of money in it … this is a huge money-maker for the medical industry. I think there’s a lot of unconscionable profiteering going on.”
Keffler’s organization, Partners for Ethical Care, has received an uptick in traffic in recent weeks as increasing numbers of parents have reached out for help because their children have been harmed by the medicalization of gender, such as the use of cross-sex hormones in teenagers in pursuit of appearing as the opposite sex.
“We talk to new parents all the time and several support groups for parents on social media, and there’s just more and more of an influx of them coming in. It’s heartbreaking. Honestly, I’ve felt this way about the book for almost a week now, and every time someone buys it my heart hurts a little bit because I know that this is another family that’s been impacted by this,” she lamented.
“I think a critical mass is growing and people are going to realize that this isn’t just a trend with bad families or people who don’t parent well or some weird sub-set. This is actively being strategically put in our schools and on social media.”
Parents who are reaching out are politically diverse, conservative and liberal alike, she noted.
“[Gender ideology] is non-discriminatory across the spectrum with people whose kids are getting sucked into this,” Keffler said.
A three-judge federal appeals court panel has ruled in favor of an evangelical professor who was punished by Shawnee State University in Ohio for refusing to address a transgender student by the preferred pronoun. Reversing a district court’s dismissal of his lawsuit against university officials, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the allegations made by philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether suggest the university may have violated the professor’s First Amendment rights.
The case has been remanded back to the lower court for “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
The district court had dismissed Meriwether’s claims related to free speech and religious protections, ruling that his way of addressing the student was not protected under the First Amendment.
“Traditionally, American universities have been beacons of intellectual diversity and academic freedom,”the 6th Circuit opinion written by Trump appointee Judge Amul Thapar states.
“They have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated. And they have tried not to stifle debate by picking sides. But Shawnee State chose a different route: It punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue. And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment. The district court dismissed the professor’s free-speech and free-exercise claims. We see things differently and reverse.”
The ruling was celebrated by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit devoted to cases on free speech and religious freedom that has won several Supreme Court cases in the last decade.
“This case forced us to defend what used to be a common belief — that nobody should be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep their job,” ADF Vice President of Appellate Advocacy and Senior Counsel John Bursch said in a statement.
“We are very pleased that the 6th Circuit affirmed the constitutional right of public university professors to speak and lead discussions, even on hotly contested issues. The freedoms of speech and religion must be vigorously protected if universities are to remain places where ideas can be debated and learning can take place.”
In his lawsuit, the professor contended that the university violated his free speech rights by dictating how he should refer to students in his political philosophy class in 2018 to avoid offending a trans-identified student.
The transgender student got belligerent and threatened to see to it that Meriwether, a member of the Presbyterian Church of America, was fired. Meriwether feels it would violate his religious beliefs if he referred to a transgender student by biologically inaccurate pronouns and titles.
After a complaint was raised with the school administration, a superior advised Meriwether to refer to all students by their last names and eliminate all sex-based references in class.
Meriwether objected to the superior’s proposal and proposed a solution in which he would only refer to the transgender student by their last name while continuing to refer to other students with their proper titles and last names. Initially, Meriwether’s superior agreed to that arrangement.
But later, Meriwether was told that the student didn’t like being the only one in the class called by only their last name with no title. The student threatened to file a Title IX lawsuit. It was then that Meriwether was told that he would violate the university’s nondiscrimination policy if he did not either begin calling the transgender student by the preferred title or simply refer to all students by their last names only.
Meriwether was told that he could face a suspension or possible dismissal if he did not change the way he addressed the transgender student in the class.
As the student continued to complain, Meriwether faced a university Title IX investigation. In the summer of 2018, Meriwether was given a formal warning and accused of creating a “hostile environment” for the student. The warning was reflected in Meriwether’s personnel file.
“For starters, the Title IX investigator interviewed just four witnesses, including Meriwether and Doe,” the 6th Circuit ruling states. “She did not interview a single non-transgender student in any of Meriwether’s classes, nor did she ask Meriwether to recommend any potential witnesses. Indeed, except for Meriwether and Doe, not a single witness testified about any interactions between the two. Even so, the Title IX officer concluded that Meriwether ‘created a hostile environment.’”
“Under the university’s policies, a hostile environment exists only when ‘there is harassing conduct that limits, interferes with or denies educational benefits or opportunities, from both a subjective (the complainant’s) and an objective (reasonable person’s) viewpoint,’”the ruling continues.
“But the Title IX report does not explain why declining to use a student’s preferred pronouns constitutes harassment.”
The country’s most powerful business interests are openly collaborating with a radical advocacy group to push sweeping legislation that would set women back decades at the expense of an extreme, elite agenda. The left’s historic skepticism of corporate power has morphed into a demand for more of it.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT activist group with far-left interests, has assembled a coalition of the world’s most powerful corporations to support the Equality Act. Scroll through the incredible list and you’ll find massive corporations from Amazon to Bain to Best Buy aligned with HRC’s radical mission.
The Equality Act, passed by the House on Thursday, is a deeply radical bill that would put women in danger, erode free speech and religious rights, and destroy Title IX gains for girls’ sports. These claims about its potential consequences are not a cartoonish right-wing intimidation campaign — they are agreed upon by conservatives and honest progressive, feminist experts alike.
Republicans and Democrats should not be intimidated by the far-left’s false advertising of the bill as a commonsense measure to protect oppressed and vulnerable members of the public. There are ways to protect transgender Americans that do not involve putting women in danger while quashing free speech, girls’ sports, and religious freedom.
Corporate America, along with the media, is now run by extremists who’ve brought radical cultural leftism from academia into the corridors of power. They now share the very same cultural priorities as far-left groups like HRC. The effect of this shared cultural consensus is that businesses use their corporate power to push radical cultural leftism on the rest of the country because the media demands and cheerleads such efforts, eliminating the risk of bad press.
The strain of elite leftism that dominates our corporate institutions operates on a firm progressive-or-bigot binary, meaning even a pro-trans leftist like J.K. Rowling faces intense charges of bigotry because she’s skeptical of extreme aspects of the trans agenda. That means baby boomer bosses are intimidated into signing onto efforts like HRC’s Equality Act push and millennial executives and journalists demand it.
Because this progressive-or-bigot binary has such a chilling effect on free expression, extreme elements of the trans agenda like undermining Title IX, hormone treatments for children, and men in women’s shelters are enforced without robust debate. The cost of speaking up far outweighs the benefit for most people.
As a consequence, corporate elites are rendering everyday Americans powerless, colluding to enforce new, radical cultural norms by disempowering the working class to speak up, earn scholarships, or sleep soundly in a shelter for victims of domestic violence. It’s the very reason Abigail Shrier had to write “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” — the normalization of radical new standards for sex and gender are having dangerous real-world consequences, especially for young women.
HRC and its “Business Coalition” are proud of immense corporate power. Here’s how the group describes the campaign on its website: “Launched in March 2016, the 364 member companies of HRC’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act have operations in all 50 states, headquarters spanning 33 states and a combined $6 trillion in revenue, and employ over 13.1 million people in the United States.”
This is a leftist group bragging that it represents Big Business to the tune of a combined $6 trillion in revenue and control over the livelihoods of 13 million people. This is Big Business bragging that it supports the agenda of cultural extremists.
Certainly, HRC’s effort is more evidence of the dissolving marriage between economic leftists and cultural ones. Capitalists are now cultural leftists.
More importantly, however, it’s evidence of an elite effort to wield corporate power over working people in the interest of an extreme cultural agenda. The Equality Act is a plaything of the elites that will disempower working people, and lawmakers should not be intimidated into believing the legislation is anything else.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist. You can follow her on Twitter @emilyjashinsky .
Medical, legal experts warn of Equality Act’s impact on parents, kids and religious freedom
LGBT activists and their supporters rally in support of transgender people on the steps of New York City Hall, in New York City, October 24, 2018. | Getty Images/Drew Angerer
Legal and medical experts and concerned parents have warned that the Equality Act, which passed in the House Thursday, will have lasting implications on children, parental rights, and religious freedom if it becomes law. The 500-plus page bill, which passed by a vote of 224-206 adds sex, gender identity and sexual orientation to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The measure was reintroduced in the House where it was first passed in 2019 before it stalled in the Senate. It adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in nondiscrimination law. The measure also strips away key religious liberty provisions and conscience protections in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Its effects would be far-reaching because it redefines “public accommodation” to include “any establishment” that provides a service, including churches, shelters operated by religious groups, faith-based adoption agencies, and educational institutions associated with religious denominations and associations.
The three Republicans who joined Democrats in voting for the measure included Reps. Tom Reed and John Katko, both of New York, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
During a virtual event hosted by the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Rep. Vicki Hartzler, R-Mo., and Autumn Leva of the Family Policy Alliance, detailed various concerns they have about the Equality Act and its implications for Americans if it’s passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.
Other speakers at the Heritage event were Maria Keffler of Partners for Ethical Care, Dr. Michelle Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians, and Greg Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom.
Hartzler, a former teacher and track coach, explained that the bill, if enacted, would erase all the gains that women have made in athletics by allowing trans-identified males to compete in girls’ sports. Thus far, 20 states have introduced legislation intended to keep sports sex-segregated.
If the bill becomes law “we won’t have women’s sports that are fair,” added Hartzler, who derided it as the “Inequality Act.”
Parental rights are also in serious jeopardy with this potential law, she continued. If the Act passes in the Senate it will filter down to what is taught in public school classrooms and parents won’t be able to object to content because it will be seen as a discrimination issue.
Similarly, parents’ rights to make healthcare decisions for their children would erode with the Act, according to Hartzler, referencing a 2018 case where a judge removed custody from the parents because they objected to their 17-year-old child being prescribed experimental cross-sex hormones.
“If this passes nationwide we could see parents facing a similar situation all over the country,” she said.
Hartzler is supporting the Heritage Foundation’s Promise To America’s Children, a national movement the think-tank has put forward to oppose the Equality Act and, more broadly, the imposition of gender ideology on children in the public sphere. The Promise, as Heritage states, aims to “create and support laws that will protect children’s health, safety, and families — especially their relationships with their parents, who have the primary responsibility to love, protect, and educate them.”
During the 90-minute House debate over the bill on Thursday, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., claimed the Equality Act posed no threat to religious freedom and that such concerns being raised by Republicans were “ridiculous.” Maloney then accused the bill’s opponents of using religious freedom as a ruse to conceal their “pro-discrimination against gay people.”
In response to Maloney’s accusations, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, declared: “Here it is, on page 25. It says specifically, ‘The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a legal basis for a claim’ [against a religious discrimination charge].
“The founders said in the first right, in the First Amendment to the Constitution, you can practice your religion as you see fit. But right here in their bill today, the Democrats say ‘No you can’t,’”Jordan asserted.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., also derided Republicans’ religious freedom arguments as nothing more than “transphobia,” “homophobia,” and “hate,”The Epoch Times reported.
During the Heritage Foundation’s panel Tuesday, Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians noted how the issue of gender dysphoria in children has become politicized. It’s this politicization that she says has corrupted the entire profession of medicine. The vast majority of medical professionals, therapists, and counselors believe that the best course of treatment for the condition is to first take a very thorough psychological assessment of the child in pursuit of underlying factors, she explained.
“Those in authority over the medical education system and directives to practicing physicians now recommend that all children, regardless of their age, be affirmed in their gender confusion. We are essentially gaslighting children into the lie that they could be born in the wrong body,” Cretella said in her remarks.
This, then, will put them on a medical pathway in which their normal puberty will be chemically arrested and will be followed up by opposite-sex hormones, she added. The combination of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones yields potentially lifelong sterility.
“We already have physically healthy girls as young as 13 being referred for double mastectomies. This is institutionalized child abuse,”she asserted. “We are taking emotionally troubled youth, psychologically abusing them by reinforcing their gender-sexual confusion, and then experimenting on them with toxic drugs and mutilating surgeries.”
Cretella has been contacted by doctors both domestically and internationally who say that it is now “career-ending” for them to suggest to a family or to their colleagues in a professional setting that these dysphoric children need a psychological assessment.
“Cancel culture has arrived in medicine and psychology and it’s very frightening,” she said.
Asked what she thinks could happen in 10 years should the Equality Act become law, Cretella said medical professionals who object to gender-transitioning of children and believe in the principle of “first do no harm”will be eliminated from practice. The ones you’ll be left with are the ones who believe in“experiment first, ask questions later.”
Maria Keffler noted that among the most concerning aspects of radical gender ideology that is all the rage in culture is how young schoolchildren are being instructed by teachers using curricula that is not factual or rooted in science.
“And we’re teaching this to our children en masse. It’s shocking when you see what’s being done in the schools … and where it’s coming from. … It’s about making money. It’s about furthering an agenda.
“Children are being taught from kindergarten upward that some boys have a vagina, some girls have a penis, and that kids can be any gender they want to be, she continued.
Keffler recounted that she has heard stories of elementary school children being asked to stand up in class to tell everyone about their “gender identity.” She added that she can no longer, in good conscience, say that public schools are safe places for children. Many people still don’t realize how dire the situation has become, she asserted, especially as some school officials advise teachers to deceive parents by allowing students to lead double lives by portraying an opposite-gender identity while at school.
The Equality Act will exacerbate this highly politicized approach within medicine, psychology, education, and other professional fields, according to Greg Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom. Because of the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in nondiscrimination provisions, any entity that receives federal taxpayer dollars is subject to such policies. Among the largest recipients of taxpayer funds are public schools.
When asked whether religious freedom protections outlined in federal law would be preserved if the Equality Act becomes law, the ADF attorney noted the lack of religious exemptions in the bill. At the state and local level where similar statutes have been adopted, such carve-outs are present.
“But with the Equality Act you have none of that, there is no exemption for religious employers, there is no exemption for religious foster care providers, there is no exemption for religious schools.”
It is debated whether existing legal provisions can protect certain religious entities from discrimination claims, such as Title VII in the Civil Rights Act, the section pertaining to employment and section in the Fair Housing Act, the provisions of which would likely apply to religious colleges that have sex-segregated dormitories.
But the most destructive feature is how the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is impacted, he said, a law that was passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis and signed into law by former President Bill Clinton. The Equality Act expressly forbids invoking RFRA from the portions of the civil rights laws that it amends.
This previous approach to religious liberty is “gone, I’m afraid,”he said, “and it’s even to the point of essentially repealing large chunks of RFRA.”
When a federal law conflicts with state law, federal law wins, he said. Thus, if a state statute establishes that males who identify as female cannot participate in girls’ scholastic sports, the Equality Act’s revisions to Title XI would trump the state law.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday pressed President Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary of health on whether the government should override a parent’s consent to allow a gender-dysphoric child to begin taking hormones or pursue sex-change surgery.
Paul asked Dr. Rachel Levine, who identifies as a transgender woman, whether minors are capable of making life-altering decisions to undergo irreversible medical procedures that permanently change their bodies. In his question, Paul compared sex-change operations for minors to genital mutilation.
“Genital mutilation has been nearly universally condemned. … Genital mutilation is considered particularly egregious because, as the WHO notes, it is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children,” Paul said.
“Most genital mutilation is not typically performed by force, but as WHO notes, by social convention. Social norm. The social pressure to conform. To do what others do and have been doing as well as the need to be accepted socially and the fear of being rejected by the community,” he continued.
“American culture is now normalizing the idea that minors can be given hormones to prevent their biological development of their secondary sexual characteristics. Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia. Like surgical mutilation, hormonal interruption of puberty can permanently alter and prevent secondary sexual characteristics. The American College of Pediatricians reports that 80-95% of prepubertal children with gender dysphoria will experience resolution by late adolescence if not exposed to medical intervention and social affirmation,”he continued.
“Dr. Levine, do you believe minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?” Paul asked.
Levine replied, “Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed and if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as the assistant secretary of health, I’ll look forward to working with you and your office and coming to your office and discussing the particulars of the standards of care for transgender medicine.”
Unsatisfied, Paul accused Levine of evading his question.
“Do you support the government intervening to override the parent’s consent to give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or amputation surgery of breasts and genitalia? You have said that you’re willing to accelerate the protocols for street kids. I’m alarmed that poor kids with no parents, who are homeless and distraught — you would just go through this and allow that to happen to a minor,” he said.
Paul shared the story of Keira Bell, a 23-year-old U.K. woman who is taking legal action against the NHS, claiming that she should have been challenged by medical staff on her decision as a teenager to undergo a sex-change operation to appear male. She now regrets that decision.
“What I am alarmed at is that you’re not willing to say absolutely minors shouldn’t be making decisions to amputate their breasts or to amputate their genitalia,” Paul told Levine.
Levine responded that “transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field and if confirmed to the position of assistant secretary of health, I would certainly be pleased to come to your office and talk with you and your staff about the standards of care and the complexity of this field.”
Paul again accused Levine of refusing to answer his question.
“You’re willing to let a minor take things that prevent their puberty, and you think they get that back? You give a woman testosterone enough that she grows a beard, do you think she’s going to go back to looking like a woman when she stops the testosterone? You have permanently changed them,” Paul said.
He continued: “Infertility is another problem. None of these drugs have been approved for this, they’re all being used off-label. I find it ironic that the left that went nuts over hydroxychloroquine being used possibly for COVID are not alarmed that these hormones are being used off-label. There’s no long-term studies. We don’t know what happens to them. We do know that there are dozens and dozens of people who’ve been through this who regret that this happened. And a permanent change happened to them. And if you’ve ever been around children, 14-year-olds can’t make this decision.”
“In the gender dysphoria clinic in England, 10% of the kids are between the ages of 3 and 10. We should be outraged that someone’s talking to a 3-year-old about changing their sex!” Paul exclaimed.
What the Bible Says about the Idea of Transgenderism
Humankind’s potential for self-destruction through the lusts of the flesh appears to be limitless. While there is nothing new in the sensual sins and wanton debauchery that we witness in our culture, technology has undoubtedly advanced its influence. And one such sin is being promoted in an apparently fanatical fashion: transgenderism.
What Is Transgenderism?
The subject of transgenderism, includes, specifically, “Trans-sexuality, cross-dressing,” and seeking “gender identitydevelopment,” i.e., physical identity through radical surgeries, and hormone treatment; and, more broadly, “gender atypicality” that includes “myriad subcultural expressions of self-selecting gender,” and “intersectionality” with other “interdependence” movements, i.e., feminism, homosexuality.[1] The idea of transgenderism has its roots in the primordial rebellion of humankind to the creation order of God.
Ancient pagan rituals would have included some aspects of transgender practice. More currently, social anarchists such as the otherwise brilliant French social critic, Michael Foucault, argued that Christianity, in particular, has leveraged its cultural “powers” (a recurring them with Foucault) to repress human sexual expression. Foucault taught that gender is a social construct, not a biological fact. The absurdity of such thinking was largely unchallenged in the 1960s and 70s when Foucault and others were teaching such dogma in prestigious universities in Canada, France, and the United States.
Perhaps, we felt that it was too ludicrous to engage. Recently, in 2019, when a former United States Vice-President was asked how many genders there were, he responded, “At least three.” Such a frighteningly fallacious response by a person of influence constitutes an unmitigated endorsement of Foucault’s radical deconstruction of reality. For someone to affirm, with a straight face, in serious dialogue, “There are at least three genders” is an Orwellian case study in, “doublethink,” “newspeak,” and the “thought police” writ large. To speak seriously about a gender other than male and female is surely the untenable subordinating to the inconceivable.
The Medical Truth about Gender Dysphoria
At one time it would have been unnecessary, but it, now, has to be said: The American College of Pediatricians should be awarded a courage award for stating the obvious:
“Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of male and female, respectively – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident.”
To those who suffer from “gender dysphoria” (the new diagnostic language in DSM-5 replacing “Gender Identity Disorder” in DSM-IV-TR), feeling trapped in a person of the opposite sex, the prestigious association responds with merciful scientific clarity:
“No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.”
Then, how do otherwise smart people fall for the newspeak of Michael Foucault and Kimberlé Crenshaw, and, increasingly, advocate for public school textbooks that endorse transgenderism? How is it that parents in Long Beach, California, who oppose transvestite “drag queens” (invited by former First Lady, Michelle Obama) reading to their kindergartners, are considered “haters?” And that leads us to the Scripture that describes this incredible cultural transformation.
Photo credit: Pexels/WendyVanzyl
The Biblical Truth about Gender
Sexual sins, including transgenderism, were among the most heinous practices of the peoples living in Canaan. The lessons of their judgment because of deviant sexual practices remain as ominous warning signs to us today. When we prefer unbelief to faith in God, in order to advance the lusts of our flesh, we inevitably, and often irretrievably, destine ourselves for judgment. In the cases before us, the people groups living in Canaan digressed from what is clearly shown in creation and in God’s Word—that we are born as either male or female, and that our God-given human sexuality is divinely sanctioned, and most beautifully expressed as complimentary (man and woman), and within the covenanted bonds of matrimony (husband and wife)—led to a veritable infestation of the land, which “vomited” the people from the land, and led to judicial hardening of their hearts, and their ultimate destruction.
1. Male and Female He Created Them
God has not left us without His Word and, thus, His will concerning sexuality. Firstly, humankind is binary. There is no third or fourth category of a human being. Nature attests to what Scripture reveals. Human beings are made in God’s image and created either male or female.
“Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (Genesis 5:2).
Our Savior, Christ Jesus, by whom the world was created and through whom it is sustained, appealed to His own Word in Genesis to affirm the divinely created order, and the sanctity of marriage (Colossians 1:16).
“He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).
The Scriptures not only provide creation-background for what we see plainly in biology, but the texts also show us that God’s creation was—and is— good. Male and female are perfectly complementary in biology, physiology, emotion, and spirit. Humanity finds its fullest expression in the unity of people being made one in marriage, a sacred and inviolable covenant instituted by Almighty God. Thus, it is not enough for us to merely point out the evil and, therefore, the consequent tragedy of sexual sin. We must also be diligent to lift up the beauty and blessings that flow from the created order of a loving God.
2. Sexual Sin as Abomination
Secondly, although the text I would cite is concerned with God’s command forbidding same-sex relationships, one could deploy the transgender movement’s “intersectionality” instrument to include the passage in our study. Nevertheless, the prohibition against same-sex relations is indicative of God’s abhorrence of such wickedness: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).
3. Cross-Dressing Forbidden
Transgenderism is explicitly addressed in the Bible. This fact reminds us that the phenomenon of trans-sexual expression is not new. The practice is a deviant display of witness rebellion against the created order of God. For those, like Foucault, who saw gender as merely social constructs, enforced by puritanical power structures and subject to deconstruction, the voice of God in the Bible still speaks:
“A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 22:5).
4. Living in the Land of Unbelief
Thirdly, believers should walk carefully in this present, evil “Secular Age,” as the imminent Canadian philosopher, Dr. Charles Taylor, has described our Post-Christian culture. What did the Lord say to Cain?
“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7).
Every believer must be alert to the dangerous presence of anti-Christian powers, and demonic spirits of this world, using unrepentant sinners who are beating at the door of our consciences to demand that we accept and approve of what God forbids. God called Israel to be conscious of the seducing powers of the Canaanites, whose wickedness in sexual sins led to divine judgment:
“For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 18:29-30).
Male prostitutes were marked out by God as those whose wickedness brought judgment:
“And there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel” (1 Kings 14:24).
We would do well to mark the comments of the old pastor-scholar John Gill (1697-1771) instructing Christians who live in “this present evil age” (Galatians 1:4):
“Now Christ gave himself a sacrifice for the sins of his people, that as in consequence of this they might be delivered and saved from the damning power, so from the governing power and influence of all that is evil in this present world; as from Satan, the god of it, who has usurped a power over it; from the lusts that are predominant in it; from the vain conversation of the men of it; from the general conflagration of it at the last day, and from the perdition of ungodly men, and their eternal destruction in hell.”[9]
It is difficult to imagine a contemporary social movement that is more dangerously consistent with the downward spiral of Romans chapter one than transgenderism. Read these words from St. Paul and ask yourself if we are not living in the times that he describes:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:18-22);
“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (26-28).
“Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32).
In Romans 1:18-32, the Apostle Paul describes unbelieving man’s descent into a hell of his own making. Unbelief in the presence of the undeniable coupled with intellectual and spiritual anarchy devolves into not only the normalization of the irredeemable but the codification of the indefensible. Reading Romans Chapter One is like living through the last twenty years. For as Dr. D. James Kennedy once said, “When your code cracks, your creed crumbles.” One is only amazed at the rapid rate of decline.
What’s the Big Deal about Sexual Sin?
The truth is undeniable: God abhors sexual sins because it strikes at the image of God in Man. Sexual sin, including transgenderism, explicit and exemplarily condemned in the Word of God, degrades human beings. Our women and children will always suffer the most if we allow such corruption to continue without divine intervention. So, the Lord speaks to us today:
“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
The gospel is a perennial word of hope. We do not have to fall into these sins. Paul wrote,
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2).
Transgenderism is a sad symptom of a soul in torment. The sin is an especially virulent pathology of the human soul. And the disease is spread by normalizing the forbidden, trivializing its lethality to the soul and to the community; and by naïvely promoting its supposed gaiety. Behind the laughing drag queen, however, is always a tragic and dying soul in need of Jesus Christ’s love.
If, in fact, you or your loved ones have been infected by the strong spirit-killing viruses of this agent of our present evil age, then, you must know: you can be healed. Life and love may be pure and holy before God. You can be fully human. Gospel transformation is not just available but is inevitable when one confesses his sin, turns to the Lord Jesus Christ to receive His mercy, grace, and receives His cleansing power of the cross: His life lived will cover yours. His death offered as a substitute for the punishment of our sins brings you redemption from the devices of the devil and the fetters of the flesh. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, a notoriously noxious group of sinners, who had been caught in every vile trick of the devil, especially in sexual sin. Paul’s words are most instructive for our study:
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Did you read that? “And such were some of you”(emphasis added). Our Lord welcomes you into the company of the redeemed. The sin that so easily besets you today will become the chains lying on the floor of that old cell where you used to exist. But, praise God, you are not what you were. You are not what you will be. You are who you are: a sinner saved by grace, a child of God, loved by Him, redeemed by Him, and destined for a life you only imagined.
1. See S. Stryker and S. Whittle, The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge, 2006), 1,2; https://books.google.com/books?id=HBRR1isU-VAC. The concept of intersectionality, attributed to UCLA and Columbia Law School professor, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw (1959–), an intellectually fertile academic who also coined “Critical Race Theory.” See, e.g., Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” u. Chi. Legal f. (1989): 139.
Bibliography
Association, American Psychiatric. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub, 2013.
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” u. Chi. Legal f. (1989): 139.
Michael A. Milton, Ph.D. (University of Wales; MPA, UNC Chapel Hill; MDiv, Knox Seminary) Dr. Milton is a retired seminary chancellor and currently serves as the James Ragsdale Chair of Missions at Erskine Theological Seminary. He is the President of Faith for Living and the D. James Kennedy Institute a long-time Presbyterian minister, and Chaplain (Colonel) USA-R. Dr. Milton is the author of more than thirty books and a musician with five albums released. Mike and his wife, Mae, reside in North Carolina.
The House of Representatives passed the Equality Act on Thursday afternoon, which will impact abortion, marriage, family, gender, sports and more. In a 224-206 vote, the House passed the Equality Act. H.R. 5 would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act in order to prevent “discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.” Three Republicans voted with Democrats in favor of the Equality Act.
The act would mandate that individuals cannot be denied access to the locker room of their choice.
“An individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity,” according to the bill’s text.
Democrats tried to pass the Equality Act in 2019, but it was killed by a Republican-controlled Senate.
THESE THREE REPUBLICANS VOTED IN FAVOR OF THE EQUALITY ACT:
Pennsylvania Rep. Fitzpatrick
New York Rep. Katko
New York Rep. Reed
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during a news conference where House and Senate Democrats introduced the Equality Act of 2019 which would ban discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, on March 13, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
In 2019, there were eight House Republicans who voted in favor of the Equality Act, including Indiana Rep. Susan Brooks, Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, Texas Rep. Will Hurd, Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, and New York Reps. John Katko, Tom Reed, and Elise Stefanik, Fox News reported. (RELATED: Here’s What’s In The Equality Act)
The legislation will now head to the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. President Joe Biden promised to pass the Equality Act during his first 100 days of office in October 2020 when he was still the Democratic nominee. (RELATED: Biden Vows To Pass ‘Equality Act’ During His First 100 Days In Office)
Biden also said he would make sure LGBTQ equality is a focus of United States diplomacy before he was elected.
U.S. Army soldiers pray on September 11, 2011, during a protestant service at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. Ten years after the 9/11 attacks in the United States and after almost a decade of war in Afghanistan, American soldiers gathered for church services in prayer and solemn observance of the tragic day. | John Moore/Getty Images
A U.S. Army chaplain based in Texas faces an investigation after he made a social media post suggesting that transgender individuals are “mentally unfit” to serve in the military.
In a Jan. 26 tweet, the Army’s Security Force Assistance Command announced that “the recent comments posted to the Army Times Facebook page by Maj. Andrew Calvert regarding President Joe Biden’s policy on transgender service members are “under investigation.”
“How is rejecting reality (biology) not evidence that a person is mentally unfit (ill), and thus making that person unqualified to serve?” asked Calvert as he commented on a Facebook post from the Army Times.
A Twitter user flagged Calvert’s posts and argued that Calvert “cannot be trusted to support soldiers for another minute.”
In his post, Calvert argued that there is “little difference” between those who believe in transgenderism and “those who believe and argue for a ‘flat earth’ despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
“The motivation is different, but the argument is the same,” the chaplain stated. “This person is a MedBoard for Mental Wellness waiting to happen. What a waste of military resources and funding!”
In his Facebook profile, Calvert describes himself as a “Christian, Husband, Father, Pastor, Army Chaplain.” His profile also notes that he is employed as a brigade chaplain at the 3rd Security Force Assistance Brigade, located in Fort Hood, Texas. In a subsequent Facebook comment, Calvert argued that his position was “not extreme in the slightest.”
“The most nurturing counsel I can give to someone who is under the delusion of transgenderism (gender dysphoria) is to recommend professional counseling to assist in the healing process,” Calvert reportedly wrote in the post. “To not do so, and merely pander to make-believe social whims of the moment, is not only damaging but idiocy.”
Calvert’s Facebook posts came after Biden, who took office on Jan. 20, announced the reversal of President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military. The former president cited the “tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail” as the justification for his decision. By doing so, Trump reversed an Obama-era policy allowing openly transgender individuals to serve in the Armed Forces.
Additionally, the Security Force Assistance Command’s post instructed members of the Army to “Always remember to ‘Think, Type, Post’ when it comes to engaging in conversation on social media platforms.”
“We are soldiers 24/7 and that means always treating people with dignity and respect,” the tweet reads.
— Security Force Assistance Command (@armysfac) January 27, 2021
A Christian professor has also faced consequences for his criticism of Biden’s reversal of Trump’s military transgender policy. Professor Robert Gagnon of Houston Baptist University was locked out of his Facebook account for 24 hours after referring to transgender ideology as a “religious cult” and a “pseudo-science” in a comment defending a friend’s satirical commentary about Biden’s reversal of the transgender military ban.
In addition to Calvert and Gagnon, prominent conservative organizations were also quick to criticize Biden’s executive order. Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative activist organization Family Research Council, asserted that by signing the executive order, Biden was “diverting precious dollars from mission-critical training to something as controversial as gender reassignment surgery.”
Perkins added that “the military cannot focus its efforts on preparing to fight and win wars when it is being used as a vehicle to advance the far-left agenda.”
“After considerable study, the previous administration found gender dysphoric people attempt suicide at about nine times the rate of the general population,” said Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr, the director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.
“Service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria are also nine times more likely to have mental health encounters with a professional.”
Spoehr contends that it would be “immoral” to place individuals at higher risk from mental injury in situations “where they are likely to experience extraordinary stress.”
Calvert is hardly the first Army chaplain to face the prospect of punishment for holding to biblical Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Scott Squires, who served as an Army chaplain at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, faced the possibility of “career-ending punishment” in 2018 after telling a lesbian couple that they could not participate in a marriage retreat he was hosting because his religious beliefs taught him that marriage was a union between a man and a woman.
Ultimately, the couple was allowed to attend the retreat after another chaplain was tapped to host the event. While the U.S. Army initially recommended that Squires be charged with dereliction of duty, the chaplain was cleared of all charges a year later.
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